China was accused today of withholding vital Covid data as fears arose that a new variant could emerge from the surge in cases.
Israel and Spain have joined the growing number of countries to announce they will introduce Covid tests on travelers from China, although ministers in the UK have continued to resist calls to introduce testing.
The move came amid fears that Beijing was underreporting its cases and withholding virus samples, reducing the likelihood of a new variant being spotted.
China reportedly shared fewer than 1,000 samples of the Covid virus with the international scientific community last month, despite a rapid increase in cases after lockdown measures were eased.
The Our World in Data chart shows the daily confirmed cases of Covid in China. China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention stopped reporting daily cases last week without reason. About 5,000 cases per day and a small number of deaths have been reported in the past week. However, some estimates suggest that China is indeed experiencing a million cases and 5,000 deaths each day
Scientists urged hardliners to share more genetic sequences to look for signs of a new variant, while warning that a new mutation could be more aggressive and existing vaccines less effective against it.
Former World Health Organization epidemiologist Daniel Lopez-Acuna said Western countries should insist on negative PCR test results before accepting travelers from China to reduce the risk of transmission.
Even countries with high vaccination rates could be at risk, he said, as existing vaccines could be less effective against a potential new variant.
He told the BBC World Service: “The risk of high transmission in China is the emergence of a new variant that can escape the effectiveness of the vaccine and be more aggressive and virulent.”
Masked travelers check their passports while queuing at the check-in counter at Beijing Capital International Airport today
A medical worker attends to a patient during the Covid outbreak in the emergency room of the Ganyu District People’s Hospital in Lianyungang, northeast China’s Lianyungang, on December 28.
Pictured: A Covid patient is transferred to a wheelchair at Tianjin First Center Hospital in Tianjin, northeast China, on December 28
UK may impose travel restrictions from China due to Covid spike, says Ben Wallace
Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the situation was being “studied”, hours after the government indicated there were no plans to follow the lead of other countries such as the US in introducing mandatory tests for arrivals.
He added: “The world is not ready for a new variant. We have to understand that it is a very delicate balance to fight the virus.”
Israel and Spain said they would have travelers from China tested, while Malaysia said it would screen all international arrivals for signs of fever.
Other countries, including the US, Italy, India and Japan, have already announced new testing requirements.
The EU and Britain have resisted calls for new restrictions, although Downing Street has said it will monitor the situation.
Chinese state media condemned the new testing requirements as “baseless and discriminatory”.
Beijing has insisted on sharing information and data with the international scientific community.
But experts pointed to the latest official figures from China with 5,500 new cases and one death, compared with international estimates of up to 9,000 deaths a day in the country.
China has only reported a death toll of 5,247 since the pandemic began.
Data obtained by The Telegraph newspaper indicated that the Chinese government uploaded about 940 virus sequences to Gisaid’s global pathogen database last month and reported 644,671 cases.
British health data company Airfinity estimates that there have been around 18.6 million cases and around 100,000 deaths in China this month.
In the UK, 138,041 cases were reported last month and 7,325 Covid sequences were shared with Gisaid, which enables scientists to identify and track emerging variants, including potentially dangerous new mutations.
Denmark has published 8,723 series from 31,629 reported cases.
If there are concerns that China is underreporting cases and not sharing data, Western countries could expedite samples from travelers from China for genome sequencing.
According to daily reported cases, which depend on testing levels, China recorded 2 cases per million people in the week ending December 22, while the UK reported 97 and the US 200.
Our World in Data figures show that 89 per cent of people in China received double bites, while 75 per cent in the UK and 69 per cent in the US received two doses.
Sequencing data suggest that the omicron subvariant BF.7 is emerging in China, causing 35.3 percent of positive cases studied in laboratories
BF.7 is estimated to have a 30 percent growth advantage, suggesting that it spreads more easily, makes people contagious longer, or evades the immune system better than the currently dominant BA.5 strain
Anyone doing a PCR test, such as people in hospitals or nursing homes, may be asked if they have recently entered the country from China.
The move could pave the way for new variants that may have been introduced from China to be detected by scientists in the West.
Meanwhile, one of the government’s top scientific advisers played down fears of a new variant, saying tighter border restrictions were unlikely.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard said efforts to ban a virus had already failed.
The chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization said that even if a new strain of Covid emerged in China, its impact in the UK was likely to be limited due to the high levels of immunity already in the population is present.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “To eradicate a virus by changing what we do about travel has already shown that it doesn’t work very well. We saw this with the travel bans from various countries during the pandemic.
“Most importantly, we have surveillance that if a virus spreads to our populations here in the UK or in Europe, we are able to predict and predict what will happen to health systems and particularly to the most vulnerable people dealing with the population can happen.”
He said China’s current wave of cases may not be transmitted to the UK, where vaccines are different and the population has “extra immunity” to previous Covid waves.
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Crystal Leahy is an author and health journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a background in health and wellness, Crystal has a passion for helping people live their best lives through healthy habits and lifestyles.
