Ruminations: Beijing Withdrew Its Finger From the COVID Dike

"The peak of COVID infection is approaching … infection numbers are increasing at an accelerating rate in Dongguan [city]."
"Our health system and health workers are facing an unprecedented challenge and immense pressure."
Dongguan City Health Authority, 10 million population

"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."
"When we’ve seen big waves of infection, it’s often followed by new variants being generated."
"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. Stuart Campbell Ray, infectious disease expert, Johns Hopkins University

"[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 after vaccines came out]."
"Or, will the pattern of evolution be completely different?"
Dr. Gagandeep Kang, Christian Medical College, Vellore, India

Health workers transport a patient into the emergency room of a hospital in Shanghai on Friday, December 23. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty Images

On a single day last week close to 37 million people were assumed to ave been infected with COVID019, given estimates from China's top health authority. A staggering number of outbreaks that identify China's most recent coronavirus outbreak as the worlds largest by a huge margin. Up to 248 million people representing close to 18 percent of the vast population of 1.4 billion, are assumed to have contracted the virus in the first twenty days of December; figures released from an internal meeting of
China's National Health Commission.

Although the numbers are incomprehensibly huge, they should come as no surprise. It was widely assumed by epidemiologist outside China that taking into account Beijing's firm lockdown mandates, its failure to completely inoculate the most vulnerable demographic in its population -- the elderly -- and the government's insistence on using the country's own COVID vaccines rather than import the highly successful mRNA vaccines from the West, the greater population would be immediately vulnerable to infection as soon as Beijing's stern 'no COVID' policy was lifted.

The highly communicable Omicron variant in wide circulation internationally had its foothold in China as well, to ensure widespread infection would follow. This was COVID-zero coming home to roost in a population known to have low levels of natural immunity as well as a low measure of circulating antibodies resulting form a successful vaccination plan. China's vaccines are known to have a fairly low efficacy rate.

Over 50 percent of residents of Sichuan province and the capital Beijing have been infected. People in China are making home use of rapid antigen tests with no obligation to report positive results, a far cry from the previous rigid demands of a government determined to vanquish the SARS-CoV-2 virus from Chinese soil. As well, Beijing no longer publishes the daily number of asymptomatic cases. Ma Xiaowei, head of the National Health Commission of China , acknowledged deaths will inevitably occur with the viral spread.

Beijing was the first city to be hit and is now beginning to see severe and critical cases peak at the same time that its overall infection rate is diminishing. The outbreak is now in the process of spreading from urban centres to China's vast rural geography, where medical resources can be somewhat sparse.

50 of the 130 omicron versions detected in China had resulted in outbreaks.

"[The country is creating a national genetic database] to monitor in real time [how different strains were evolving and the potential implications for public health]."
"[At this point, however, there’s limited information about genetic viral sequencing coming out of China]. We don’t know all of what’s going on [but clearly], the pandemic is not over."
Jeremy Luban, virologist, University of Massachusetts Medical School

"The numbers look plausible, but I have no other sources of data to compare [them] with."
"If the estimated infection numbers mentioned here are accurate, it means the nationwide peak will occur within the next week."
Ben Cowling, professor of epidemiology, University of Hong Kong