Virus and fear surge in China: what’s happening and why?

Subject: Environment

Context:

A surge of Covid-19 infections in China in the past few weeks has prompted warnings that the country could witness over a million deaths in the coming months, even though official figures presented a very different picture.

China Covid-19 surge: What’s happening?

A surge in cases ever since it relaxed the suffocating restrictions last month following rare public protests.

Fast-transmitting variant:

The dominant virus strain in China is BF.7, a sub-variant of Omicron that has been in circulation for over a year now.
There are over 500 Omicron sub-variants currently in circulation.
BF.7 is the name for the BA.5.2.1.7, which itself has evolved from the BA.5 sub-variant. BF.7 is not unique to China.
It accounted for over 5 per cent of the cases in the US in October and over 7 per cent of the cases in the UK.
There is no scientific evidence to suggest that there is one particular variant that is driving the surge in China. Neither is there evidence to suggest that any new variant is the cause.
The Gisaid data (a global database of Sars-CoV-2 genomes) shows that nothing vastly different has been uploaded from the country.

Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID):

The GISAID platform was launched on the occasion of the Sixty-first World Health Assembly in May 2008.
GISAID is a global science initiative and primary source for genomic data of influenza viruses and the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.
In 2010 the Federal Republic of Germany became the official host of the GISAID platform and EpiFlu™ database providing sustainability of the platform and stability through its public-private-partnership with the GISAID Initiative to this day.
In 2013 the European Commission recognized GISAID as a research organization and partner in the PREDEMICS consortium, a project on the Preparedness, Prediction and the Prevention of Emerging Zoonotic Viruses with Pandemic Potential using multidisciplinary approaches.

Key role:

The Initiative ensures that open access to data in GISAID is provided free of charge to all individuals that agreed to identify themselves and agreed to uphold the GISAID sharing mechanism governed through its Database Access Agreement.