Very little discovered in France, this subvariant of Omicron was the majority in Beijing in early December. Its high contagiousness could be one of the reasons for the explosion of Covid-19 cases in the country.
“It’s an explosive situation.” Imad Kansau, specialist in infectious diseases at the Antoine Bécière Hospital in Clamart (Hauts-de-Seine), reacted to the meteoric increase in positive cases of Covid-19 in China on BFMTV and sounded the alarm.
Since the drastic health measures that came into force at the beginning of the pandemic were lifted in early December, “at least 250 million people in China have been infected,” confirmed Christian Bréchot, virologist and president of the Global Virus Network. “Until recently we were around 660 million globally since the start of the pandemic,” he added.
Numbers that “crash”, partly due to the proliferation of a subvariant of Omicron, BF.7. This BA.5 subline became the majority in Beijing earlier this month, according to specialist website Livescience.
A higher reproduction rate?
On December 16, Antoine Flahault, epidemiologist and director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, wrote: on twitterthat “BF.7 would have an R0 (virus reproduction rate) of 10 to 18.6. This means that an infected person transmits the virus to between 10 and 18.6 other people on average, compared to an average of 5.08 at Omicron,” citing an article in Chinese tabloid Global Times.
According to Li Tongzeng, a medical expert at Beijing’s Xiaotangshan Hospital included in the article, the symptoms of BF.7 are similar to those of other Omicron subvariants: fever, cough, sore throat or vomiting, diarrhea…
While early studies tend to confirm that BF.7 is no more virulent than the other omicron mutations, its high contagiousness is a concern for world health authorities.
The emergence of other mutations?
“A pandemic is a global, global problem. We cannot argue in Franco-French terms. What is happening in China will inevitably affect global health in one way or another,” Christian Brechot assured.
“An explosion of cases in a rather dramatic situation can have consequences for the rest of the world, explained infectious disease specialist Imad Kansau, for the rest of the countries it is a breeding ground for viruses that can still give rise to mutants.
The more the virus circulates, the more new variants or subvariants with more dangerous properties can actually appear. The health risk would therefore not be immediate – especially in France, where vaccination coverage is high.
“More transferrable variants may appear,” warned Antoine Flahault over our antenna.
However, monitoring the development of the epidemic in China is becoming increasingly complicated. The National Health Commission, which is equivalent to a ministry, has reported since Sunday that it would no longer publish the daily numbers of Covid cases and deathsas it had done since the pandemic began.
The closure of the country’s economy
The tens of millions of cases detected every day in China could again slow down the country’s activities and have a direct impact on the rest of the world, especially France with shortages of materials or even medicines.
For example, on December 24, Rémi Salomon, chairman of the medical committee of AP-HP, recalled in a tweet that “80% of the active ingredients, the raw material for our medicines, are manufactured in China and India”.
“The Covid wave currently sweeping China risks exacerbating our supply difficulties for many drugs,” he wrote, citing the need to “relocate production.”