A report released on Wednesday reveals that no new varieties of Covid-19 appeared during the most recent outbreak in China based on an analysis of patients in Beijing.
After nearly three years of rigorous "zero-Covid" measures, the Chinese authorities eased most prohibitions on December 7 in response to rare widespread unrest. A population of 1.4 billion people who had barely been exposed to the coronavirus was suddenly exposed to it during the winter, raising concerns that the outbreak could give rise to a new variant of the disease and prompting testing and other restrictions on travelers from China in dozens of countries, including the United States.
The study, which was funded by China and was published in The Lancet, discovered that every one of the 413 infections in Beijing that were sampled belonged to a known Covid variety. Omicron subvariants BA.5.2 and BF.7 were the most prevalent and combined they were responsible for more than 90% of local infections.
From a larger set of 2,881 high-quality samples taken in Beijing between November 14 and December 20, 2022, the samples for genome sequencing were chosen at random from the larger group.
Given the influence that other variants, such as delta and omicron, have had on the progression of the pandemic, George Gao, the study's lead author and a professor at the Institute of Microbiology in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said it was crucial to look into whether any new variants had emerged during China's outbreak.
According to the former director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao, "our study reveals two known omicron subvariants — rather than any new variants — have been largely responsible for the current increase in Beijing, and possibly China as a whole."
The continuous widespread distribution of Covid-19 in China, however, makes it crucial that we continue to keep a careful eye on the situation to identify any potential new variants as quickly as possible.
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