FEARS are mounting that a new super-infectious Covid variant could emerge in China as millions head home for Chinese New Year next week.
China is in the grip of a massive Covid surge after its leader Xi Jinping finally ditched his disastrous Zero Covid policy of draconian lockdowns.
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The government has now stopped releasing official daily figures for infections and deaths – but it’s estimated at least 5,000 people are dying every day.
China’s sprawling countryside is now racing to beef up its hospitals as hundreds of millions of factory workers prepare to return to their families for the Lunar New Year.
Every year, Chinese people flood home via planes, trains, ferries and by car – sparking mass movement within China as well as from abroad.
Dubbed the world’s largest human migration, China’s Ministry of Transport said the travel rush is expected to last 40 days – kicking off on January 7.
Travel numbers are thought to return to pre-pandemic levels – when three billion trips were made between January 21 and March 1.
Rural areas are ramping up their numbers of life support machines and ICU beds amid fears of an overwhelming influx of Covid patients, China Daily reports.
Chinese health officials said Omicron was still the dominant strain in the country – but scientists fear of a new variant could emerge as the virus spreads like wildfire among families gathering for the festivities.
Lengthy lockdowns mean a huge proportion of China have not been infected with newer variants.
And the low levels of immunity have stemmed in part from its botched attempt to produce an effective vaccine.
Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Centre at Washington University, said infections are likely to skyrocket as millions travel for Chinese New Year – and the explosion in cases increases the chance of new mutations.
“We have not seen it yet, but that probability really is increasing dramatically now, just because the number of infections is exploding really, really quickly in a very, very short amount of time,” he told VOA Mandarin.
Prof Dominic Dwyer, an infectious diseases physician, also warned it is “the environment where you’d expect new variants to appear”.
Others agreed the sudden lifting of restrictions could create a “potential breeding ground” for new variants.
Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, said: “Any variants, when more transmissible than the previous dominant ones… definitely represent threats, since they can cause new waves.
“However, none of these known variants seems to exhibit any particular new risks of more severe symptoms to our knowledge – although that might happen with new variants in the coming future.”
Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s former chief scientist, told the Indian Express: “We need to keep a close watch on any emerging concerning variants.”
The country’s decision to drop quarantine for overseas visitors from January 8 has also sparked major concerns about the potential for new variants to spread beyond China’s borders.
Japan and India are among countries that have now brought in measures to prevent an influx of cases.
The US, India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan also said they would require Covid tests for travellers from China – while the UK is reportedly considering a similar move.
China’s hospitals are under unprecedented pressure amid the surging wave of Covid infections.
Crematoriums are working 24 hours a day to deal with the dead as bodies begin to pile up and long queues of hazmat suit clad workers carry corpses.
Bodies are being stored in shipping containers as morgues overflow in the face of its Covid “mega tsunami”.
Harrowing images show the bodies being stacked outside a crematorium as other footage reveals Covid patients left in crowed hospital corridors, where some have been left to die.
Video showed a shipping container being used to store the dead in Beijing, where the freezing winter temperatures are able to keep bodies cold.
Howard Bernstein, a Beijing-based doctor, said patients are arriving sicker and in huge numbers – and the ICU ward where he works at the Beijing United Family Hospital was “full”.
Dr Feigl-Ding is chief of the Covid Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute and one of the first scientists to warn about the ability of Covid to spread when he worked at Harvard.
He said China was being hit by a “mega-tsunami” of Covid but warned the worst is “yet to come”.
According to health data analysts Airfinity, daily cases could reach 3.7 million per day in January and 4.2 million in March, up from the current level of one million.
They estimate there are already 5,000 deaths a day in China, in contrast to the seven officially admitted to by the government.
The draconian Zero Covid policy saw the population forced to take continual tests for Coronavirus and millions put into lockdown, even if only a small number of people were testing positive.
Horror images showed those infected being dragged off to quarantine camps and even welded into their homes by brutal “Big White” enforcers.
But a wave of protests following a fire in which the deaths of 10 people were blamed on the harsh lockdown led Xi to dramatically ditch his Zero Covid rules.
