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It's been too long since we've been terrified by COVID. Time to consider... panic(?)... again... China Might Have 65 Million COVID Cases a Week by June. How Worried Should the World Be?
...or was the 'disclaimer' buried in the middle of the piece...
Last week when a Chinese senior health adviser projected 65 million COVID-19 cases per week in China by June, some health experts sounded the alarm.
China has been facing a new COVID-19 wave fueled by the XBB variant since April. Data from Zhong Nanshan?a respiratory disease doctor who was among the first to confirm COVID-19's easy transmissibility - provided a rare insight into how the disease could possibly be spreading in China almost six months after Beijing abruptly ended its draconian zero-COVID strategy...
With the virus continuing to circulate in China coupled with a waning public immunity, the possibility of a new, more dangerous sub-variant emerging still exists, Bennett adds, although the likelihood is much smaller now. The latest mutations in the genetic makeup of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have not been significantly different from the last major variant, Omicron, and the symptoms of infections are relatively milder. "It's somewhat reassuring, thus, now a year and a half into Omicron, that we haven't seen a major shift that's either undermined our immunity, our testing capability, and importantly, antivirals," Bennett adds...
Vincent Pang, an assistant professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, says data on the spread and impact of COVID-19 will only be of use if shared with others on a global, well-regulated platform, so that these countries can perform their own risk assessment. "Infectious disease does not respect geographical boundaries," he tells TIME. "No one is safe until everyone is ready and safe."
China has been facing a new COVID-19 wave fueled by the XBB variant since April. Data from Zhong Nanshan?a respiratory disease doctor who was among the first to confirm COVID-19's easy transmissibility - provided a rare insight into how the disease could possibly be spreading in China almost six months after Beijing abruptly ended its draconian zero-COVID strategy...
With the virus continuing to circulate in China coupled with a waning public immunity, the possibility of a new, more dangerous sub-variant emerging still exists, Bennett adds, although the likelihood is much smaller now. The latest mutations in the genetic makeup of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have not been significantly different from the last major variant, Omicron, and the symptoms of infections are relatively milder. "It's somewhat reassuring, thus, now a year and a half into Omicron, that we haven't seen a major shift that's either undermined our immunity, our testing capability, and importantly, antivirals," Bennett adds...
Vincent Pang, an assistant professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, says data on the spread and impact of COVID-19 will only be of use if shared with others on a global, well-regulated platform, so that these countries can perform their own risk assessment. "Infectious disease does not respect geographical boundaries," he tells TIME. "No one is safe until everyone is ready and safe."
...The Chinese people seem to have learned to co-exist with the virus...
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