Alarm from Chinese: a new wave of Covid-19 is underway, with a peak of about 65 million cases a week expected at the end of June according to forecasts by Zhong Nanshan, the Asian giant’s main respiratory disease expert, who spoke in Guangzhou at the Greater Bay Area Science Forum. The new wave of infections is fueled – reports the Globel Times – by the XBB variants of Sars-CoV-2, which have become dominant in the country. Mutants against which China has approved two new vaccines close to commercialization and is preparing to authorize 3 or 4 more, Zhong reported. According to the National Health Commission, the recombinant XBB variants of Omicron show superior transmissibility and immune escape to Omicron, but without significant changes in terms of pathogenicity.
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The current wave should therefore not produce the overwhelming effects on Chinese hospitals seen last winter after the abandonment of the Zero Covid policy.
However, Wang Guangfa, an expert on respiratory diseases at Peking University First Hospital, stressed to the Global Times the importance of adopting appropriate preventive measures for frail people.
PREGLIASCO’S OPINION
“The XBB variants” of Sars-CoV-2, which in China are fueling a new Covid wave for which a peak of about 65 million cases per week is expected at the end of June, “certainly have characteristics of transmissibility and immunoevasion” such to make us predict “a possible rise in infections in 2-3 months too”. Fabrizio Pregliasco, a virologist at the State University of Milan, is waiting for it for the summer at the gates. But it will be “an insignificant increase, probably without a significant impact in terms of serious cases”, explains the expert to beraking latest news Salute. “The virus will remain with us – Pregliasco reiterates – with undulating and non-synchronous trends worldwide”, guided in the different areas of the world “by the levels of hybrid immunity acquired by the population (the mix between vaccination, infection and vaccination plus infection) and by the distance from the last wave. We are currently in a decreasing phase because we have undergone a wave of ascent a short time ago “, but in the near future “an increase is possible” with the decline in hybrid immunity, therefore with the increase in the pool of people vulnerable to contagion , and with the spread of transmissible and immunoevasive mutants such as Omicron XBB recombinants.