Geneticist Prus named new super-infectious variants of coronavirus from China

The explosive growth in the incidence of covid in China has been at the top of the news for more than a week. And although local authorities give out official information poorly, bloggers regularly share reports from the scene. On the Web there are photos of queues in the emergency rooms of Chinese hospitals, in which, as eyewitnesses write, some die without waiting for help. There is a shortage of medicines in pharmacies.

According to geneticists, the current Chinese outbreak is caused by the Omicron variant and its many subspecies. Is it possible to repeat the Chinese scenario in Russia, learned “MK”.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, China has faced an uncontrolled wave of COVID-19 for the first time. There are reports of hospitals being overwhelmed, lack of oxygen therapy outlets, crematoriums overburdened, medicines in short supply: pharmacy shelves in Beijing are empty, and drug delivery services can only guarantee 2-4 days delivery of most medicines.

Alexander Solovyov, the leading expert of the MedLabExpret association, cites data from a survey conducted by The Beijinger magazine: 58% of Chinese are sick with covid now or have contracted it since December 1, 2022; 9% had covid before December 1, 2022; 33% have never had covid. “The sample is not representative, but demonstrates a high level of infection in the population of Beijing at the present time,” Solovyov says.

The chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Wu Zunyu, said that between 866,000 and 1 million deaths should be expected (the official death toll since the start of the pandemic in China is 5,235). A study by Wang et al predicted back in May that if the country moves away from the Zero-covid strategy, the country will suffer 0.73 million deaths in the short term and 1.16 million deaths in the long term. “The model of Hong Kong scientists demonstrates that if the 4th dose of the vaccine is covered by 85% of the population of all age groups and antiviral treatment is provided to 60% of patients, the decrease in mortality will be only 26–35%, and the demand for hospitalization will exceed 1.5–2. 5 times the capacity of hospitals,” continues Alexander Solovyov.

At the same time, over the past years, many countries have criticized China for the “zero covid” strategy, but now a new round of criticism has caused a rapid abandonment of the strategy and a rapid transition to the concept of “life with covid”. As a result, the spread of the virus in China has become uncontrolled, leading to a collapse in healthcare, a jump in deaths, economic problems and a shortage of medicines. “There is no reliable and reliable information about how difficult the situation with the epidemic in China is now. Testing has been drastically reduced, asymptomatic cases are not registered, and the criteria for counting covid deaths have been changed. The priority is now given not to infection prevention, but to affordable differentiated medical care. The goal is to use limited medical resources for the most critical groups,” Solovyov says.

A well-known American scientist, geneticist Dmitry Prus cites coronavirus genome data from Guangzhou and Beijing, which was uploaded to the international database by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The center said about 150 subvariants were imported to China, of which at least 50 continued to circulate locally. He notes that all samples are sub-variants of “Omicron” (all “southern” samples – BA.5.2, all “northern” – BF.7). And although the Chinese Ministry of Health reported that they have many others, including more “modern” strains, these two are the most successful so far. At the same time, the BF.7 variant is today called super-infectious, since, according to Chinese experts, it has the shortest incubation period (1 person infects up to 18 contacts, while with the first Omicron, an average of 5). Local virologists talk about plans to constantly monitor the spread and pathogenicity of new strains. “But how this program will be implemented in a changing environment is unclear. It is reported that at the end of November, the Chinese government terminated contracts with private genetic laboratories for sequencing coronaviruses. If these works continue at all, then, apparently, on a smaller scale and under stricter control in state organizations,” Dmitry Prus notes.

If we talk about our country, then, according to geneticists, today the highly contagious Singaporean sub-variant of XBB has begun to gradually spread in our country (in samples from St. Petersburg collected after December 10, it is more than a third). Is it possible for us to repeat the Chinese situation?

“We have such a situation today is unlikely,” doubts Doctor of Biology, Skoltech Professor Konstantin Severinov. – At one time in the USSR, a joke was popular that ended with the phrase: “Glory to Soviet mismanagement!” In Russia, throughout the pandemic, even at the peak of the incidence, the measures were not very strict, and many did not comply with them. Vaccination was also at a lower than desirable level. This led to the fact that many people fell ill, even more than once, and, in comparison with other countries, many, alas, died. In China, on the contrary, administrative measures were draconian and very effective testing of the population was established as part of the “zero tolerance” policy for covid. These measures helped to contain the spread of the infection, but after their sudden cancellation in early December, the virus began to spread rapidly. Almost ten times more people are now being infected in China in a day than were being infected in a day around the world at the peak of Omicron. This happens because they have not developed immunity: on the one hand, there were few cases of infection, and the vaccines used were less effective than Western ones, they were mostly used more than a year ago, and the level of revaccination is low. Virologists have long warned that the policy of “zero tolerance”, as soon as the sanitary and epidemiological measures are canceled, will lead to a sharp surge in the incidence – and it happened.

– And yet China is faced with a rampant pandemic against the backdrop of Omicron and its “children” – these options lead to a less severe course of the disease …

– This is true. But there are a lot of infected people. The more infected, the higher the likelihood that new variants of the virus will appear. They will be selected on people with partial immunity. What these options will be and whether they will spread to the rest of the planet remains to be seen, but there are certainly serious risks. It personally seems to me that neither they nor we should have options leading to a severe course of the disease. Indeed, at the beginning of the pandemic, the entire population of the planet was immunologically naive, people met with the virus for the first time, and now this is no longer the case.

“New, even more contagious sub-variants of Omicron are starting to come to us. Are they capable of creating a new wave?

“All emerging variants of the coronavirus, or rather, variants that are selected and effectively spread, are more contagious and elude the immune system better than the previous ones. The peak of Omicron in the world began in December 2021, and in Russia – from January 2022 and reached a maximum in early February, then descended. It was the largest peak in incidence both in the world and in our country, but the relative number of deaths was lower than before. The outbreak of the “summer-autumn” sub-options of “Omicron” B.4 and B.5 was 4 times less in number and 10 times in mortality. Apparently, the matter is in the previous immunity, which is almost everywhere, with the exception of China. Therefore, we will not have a repetition of the Chinese situation. No one had excess mortality higher than we had. I don’t know if this can be considered good news, but many of us who could die from covid have died. And everyone who did not die, got sick and acquired immunity, became more resistant to new infections.