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Omicron response: China to wait, see and keep up tough zero-Covid rules, experts say
- Close watch to be kept on new coronavirus variant but it’s too early to make conclusions, Zhong Nanshan says
- The country already has strict border controls in place as part of its ongoing zero-Covid policy
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China has no plans to further tighten its border restrictions to contain the spread of the new and potentially more contagious Omicron coronavirus variant, leading Chinese experts said on Sunday.
A number of countries have limited travel to and from southern Africa since Friday, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a new Covid-19 variant detected in South Africa as one “of concern”.
The variant, called Omicron, has a large number of spike protein mutations and is the fifth variant to be given the designation.
Cases have already been detected in Hong Kong, Britain, Belgium, likely Germany and Italy, but Zhong Nanshan, one of China’s top respiratory disease specialists and a government adviser on its Covid-19 response, said the country had no plans to take any major action in response to the new variant.
“This mutant strain is very new. We’ll need to judge how harmful it is, how fast it will spread, whether it will make the disease more severe, and whether a vaccine needs to be developed against it,” state-owned Southern Daily quoted him as saying at a conference on Sunday.
“It’s too early to draw conclusions ... Prevention and control measures for people coming from South Africa need more attention.”
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