Covid-19 is ripping through China. Could a new variant of concern emerge?
- Some health experts believe a more severe variant is unlikely to appear, but say it’s critical to closely monitor the situation
- There could be ‘less pressure for the virus to evolve to evade immunity’ in the country after it stuck to strict pandemic curbs for so long
But despite China’s low immunity and 1.4 billion population, some health experts believe a more severe version of the virus is unlikely to appear – though they say it is critical to stay vigilant and closely monitor the situation.
When Sars-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, replicates during an infection it sometimes changes, and when there are one or more of these mutations it becomes a variant of the original virus. The World Health Organization notes that “the more viruses circulate, the more they may change”.
According to Chen Xi, a global health expert at Yale University, the major Covid-19 outbreak that is ripping through China could have unpredictable effects on the virus.
“The world’s most populous country has a large immunity trap and includes a large number of immunocompromised population, who can harbour the virus for months – that may produce variants of concern,” Chen said.
But he said the risk of new variants emerging from the outbreak could be “a bit less than it seems”.
China had stuck with its zero-Covid strategy for so long that people’s immune systems remained trained almost exclusively on the original versions of the coronavirus, he said, making it easier for the currently circulating strains to spread.