E-Paper
New Covid mutant? China's case uptick could… What experts said
Covid In China: The scientist explained that every new infection offers a chance for Covid to mutate and as the virus spreads rapidly in China.
China's Covid surge could result in a new coronavirus mutant, scientists worry. The new variant could be similar to Omicron variants or could be a combination of strains but it could also be something entirely different, scientists say.
“China has a population that is very large and there’s limited immunity. And that seems to be the setting in which we may see an explosion of a new variant," Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University said, as per Bloomberg.
Read more: Another brick in the wall: Pink Floyd raises $600,000 for Ukraine with a song
The scientist explained that every new infection offers a chance for Covid to mutate and as the virus spreads rapidly in China- a country of 1.4 billion- which has largely abandoned its ‘Zero-Covid’ policy. As immunity in the population has waned, it could become a fertile ground for the virus to change further.
“When we’ve seen big waves of infection, it’s often followed by new variants being generated,” Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray said comparing the virus to a boxer that “learns to evade the skills that you have and adapt to get around those.”
“Much of the mildness we’ve experienced over the past six to 12 months in many parts of the world has been due to accumulated immunity either through vaccination or infection, not because the virus has changed" in severity, Dr. Ray further said.
Read more: China's foreign minister on Ukraine war: Beijing ‘not adding fuel to fire’
Dr. Shan-Lu Liu, who studies viruses at Ohio State University, said many existing omicron variants have been detected in China, including BF.7 while Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College in India, said it remains to be seen if the virus will follow the same pattern of evolution in China as it has in the rest of the world.
