Taipei
The warning was issued last Monday (22). Zhong Nanshan, one of China’s top respiratory experts, said authorities are expecting a new peak of Covid19, which would infect 65 million people a week nationwide. And that should happen in a month, at the end of June.
The new wave already expected, according to Zhong began in April as Covid once again overtook the flu as the main infectious disease in China. Already in this last week of May, the cases are likely to exceed the mark of 40 million weekly infections.
Zhong’s warning somewhat confirms reports that are multiplying on social media, on Chinese platforms like Weibo and American platforms like Twitter. The publications pointed to evidence that the coronavirus was back in circulation in China and reinforced with images of Xi Jinping.
On May 10, the state news agency Xinhua reported on the visit of the Chinese head of state to Xion’an, a “city of the future” under construction 100 kilometers south of Beijing. In the photos, Xi and his entire entourage wore protective masks.
Two days later, while visiting an exhibition hall of a future biomedical industry in Shijiazhuang, the director and his entourage again protected their mouth and nose with the safety article.
Even at official events where Xi appeared without a mask, such as the reception of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Michustin on Wednesday (24) in Beijing, it is noticeable that everyone present at the very long tables in the Great Hall of the People is wearing the mask Equipment.
Added to this is the impact of the successive cancellations of various public events, such as a conference of technology entrepreneurs in Shanghai on May 14 and a popular music festival on the outskirts of Beijing, with lastminute warnings and no justification. on May 20th.
Zhong, a government adviser on Covid19 since the pandemic began, was speaking at a conference in Guangzhou accompanied by Shanghai newspaper Pengpai Xinwen (The Paper). According to him, since infection by the XBB omicron subvariants is difficult to prevent, the Chinese control strategy previously aimed at preventing infection has been adjusted to prevent serious diseases.
Along with the warning of the new wave, Zhong pointed out that two Chinese vaccines capable of combating the XBB mutant strains that have now become dominant around the world have been provisionally approved and will be available “soon”. Another three or four would be on their way for approval.
“In the search for more effective vaccines, we can be one step ahead of the world,” he is said to have said while emphasizing the importance of developing specific Chinese immunizers for the XBB subvariants. The China Center for Control and Prevention identified the first case of XBB.1.5 around three months ago and other subvariants such as XBB.1.9.1 and XBB.1.16 in April.
Last week, an advisory group to the World Health Organization released a global recommendation for vaccines to be updated this year specifically for XBB.1.5 or XBB.1.16, considered “variants of interest” by the organization. As of omicron in November 2021, there are no longer any strains of the coronavirus classified as “variant of concern”.
Partly because of reinfection, the Chinese wave is expected to be weak, perhaps even invisible, as was the case with XBB.1.5 in the US and Europe. In Brazil, the first case of the subvariant was identified in the interior of São Paulo in January, also without major repercussions in the following months.
If China’s expected 65 million new infections per week is significant, consider that the peak on December 20, 2022 was 37 million daily cases. At this point, Covid Zero was in its last breaths.
There is no prospect of a resumption of sweeping restrictions and massive mandatory mass testing task forces. China is therefore unlikely to see a repeat of the policy of strict prevention and control measures that lasted during the pandemic’s most critical phase, until it was ended after rare and vocal protests that spread to major Chinese cities.
But these ups and downs in the epidemiological scenario will continue. Xie Xiaoliang, a professor at Peking University, said China must prepare for another winter wave of Covid19 later this year. Speaking in Keji Ribao, a daily of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, Xie said that “worldwide data shows that mutations can trigger multiple rounds of infection spikes at times, about every five months.”