Experts at WHO think the new Covid-19 wave that hit China upon lifting movement restrictions and zero-covid policy is "potentially devastating." This also means the global end of the pandemic is still far.
Analysts have predicted that the world's second-largest economy can record over a million deaths in 2023. The population of 1.4 billion has seen comparatively low infections and deaths because the zero-Covid approach kept a tight leash. The relaxation of rules has changed things for the worse.
This also has an impact on the global picture, said an expert to Reuters.
Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans questioned whether you can really call the current state "post-pandemic" when such a significant part of the world is just entering its second wave. He added that the world and China are in very different phases of the pandemic and that "the pending wave in China is a wild card."
Even if the new wave is limited to China, allowing the virus to spread can provide a chance to mutate and create a new potentially dangerous variant.
The data Beijing shared with the WHO shows that the variants circulating at the moment are Omicron and its offshoots. However, experts think the data is incomplete which makes it unreliable. Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, told The Guardian that it is not clear the wave in China is "variant-driven."
Most countries have removed Covid restrictions because the threat of new variants and resurgence of infections came down in the second half of 2022. In September, the WHo chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the organisation is "hopeful" that the pandemic may end sometime in 2023. It hinted that the UN agency may be removing the highest alert level designation for Covid. The advisory committee is set to make its recommendation in late January.