SINGAPORE — Senior World Health Organization (WHO) official Mike Ryan, who is WHO’s emergencies director, told Reuters on Wednesday (21 Dec) that China is struggling to keep a tally of the number of COVID-19 infections in the country.
China is now experiencing a tsunami of cases since it abandoned its “zero-covid” policy. Many pharmacies in China are running out of regular cough and fever medicines.
In Singapore, it was reported that some of the over-the-counter medicines are also out of stock as Chinese nationals buy in bulk so as to send the medicines back to their families in China.
“In China, what’s been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling up,” Dr Ryan said. “I wouldn’t like to say that China is actively not telling us what’s going on. I think they’re behind the curve.”
Western journalists have seen dozens of hearses queued outside a Beijing crematorium on Wednesday, even as China reported no new COVID-19 deaths in its growing outbreak, sparking criticism of its virus accounting as the whole country braces for a surge in cases.
So far, China has been resisting using the more effective mRNA vaccines produced by the West and prefers, instead, to use its own domestically produced vaccines like Sinovac and Sinopharm.
Germany, which trusts the more established BioNTech mRNA vaccine, has negotiated with the Chinese government to allow the BioNTech vaccine to be imported into China so that it can be administered to its own German expatriates living in the country.
Grave concerns in China’s Covid tsunami giving rise to dangerous new variant
Meanwhile, concerns are growing that the Covid tsunami that’s currently sweeping across China may result in the emergence of a dangerous new Covid variant, reported Bloomberg.
While almost every other part of the world has battled infections and embraced vaccinations with potent mRNA shots to varying degrees, China largely sidestepped both. The result is a population with low levels of immunity facing a wave of disease caused by the most contagious strain of the virus yet to circulate.
“There will certainly be more omicron sub variants developing in China in the coming days, weeks and months, but what the world must anticipate in order to recognize it early and take rapid action is a completely new variant of concern,” said Daniel Lucey, a fellow at the Infectious Diseases Society of America and professor at Dartmouth University’s Geisel School of Medicine.
“It could be more contagious, more deadly, or evade drugs, vaccines and detection from existing diagnostics.”
The closest precedent to what could happen, Prof Lucey says, is the experience with Delta in India in late 2020 when millions of people were infected over a short period of time, and the deadly strain raced around the globe. The world must be prepared for such an event, he advised.
The other possibility is that something else entirely develops, much like how the original omicron emerged in southern Africa in late 2021. That could pose a new threat to the world. Omicron came out of nowhere after the virus made an evolutionary change in a way that’s different.
A WHO scientist told Bloomberg that the virus hasn’t settled down into a predictable pattern. “We know that it will continue to evolve. And this notion that it will only become more mild is false. It could – and we hope so – but that’s not a guarantee,” the scientist said.
In any case, according to the website information of the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA), all travellers aged 13 and above can enter Singapore “as per normal without testing or quarantine”.
The only requirement is that the traveller must have taken the minimum WHO-EUL vaccine dosage at least two weeks before arrival in Singapore. This includes two doses of the Sinovac or Sinopharm vaccine.
But for the locals in Singapore, the Ministry of Health (MOH) only considered those with four doses of Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccinations to be minimally protected.
