China may have set a new world record in logging maximum number of Covid-19 cases in a single day. Media reports suggested that nearly 37 million people in the most populated nation may have been infected with the highly infectious BF.7 variant on a single day this week.
In contrast, in India, which has the world’s second highest population, currently the cases are on a decline. In the last 24 hours, India logged 163 new coronavirus infections, while active cases declined to 3,380.
Indicating that pandemic fury is taking toll on China, estimates from the Government’s top health authority shows China’s outbreak is by far the world’s largest, news agency Bloomberg said, adding that as many as 248 million people, or nearly 18 per cent of the population, likely contracted the BF.7 virus in the first 20 days of December this year.
BF.7 is a sub-lineage of the Omicron variant BA.5 and has the strongest infection ability since it is highly transmissible, has a shorter incubation period and has a higher capacity to cause reinfection or infect even those vaccinated.
To corroborate its claim, the news agency has cited minutes from an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission held on Wednesday and confirmed with people involved in the discussions.
If accurate, the infection rate would dwarf the previous daily record of about 4 million, set in January 2022, it painted a bleak picture of the Covid status in China.
Beijing’s swift dismantling of Covid Zero restrictions has led to the unfettered spread of the highly contagious omicron variants in a population with low levels of natural immunity.
More than half the residents of Sichuan province, in China’s southwest, and the capital Beijing have been infected, according to the agency’s estimates. How the Chinese health regulator came up with its estimate is unclear, as the country shut down its once ubiquitous network of PCR testing booths earlier this month. Precise infection rates have been difficult to establish in other countries during the pandemic, as hard-to-get laboratory tests were supplanted by home testing with results that weren’t centrally collected.
Bloomberg said the NHC didn’t respond to its request for comment. The commission’s newly founded National Disease Control Bureau, which oversees the Covid response, also didn’t respond to phone calls and faxes on Friday, it said. People in China are now using rapid antigen tests to detect infections, and they aren’t obligated to report positive results. Meanwhile, the Government has stopped publishing the daily number of asymptomatic cases.
Chen Qin, chief economist at data consultancy MetroDataTech, forecasts China’s current wave will peak between mid-December and late January in most cities, based on an analysis of online keyword searches. His model suggests the reopening surge is already responsible for tens of millions of infections daily, with the largest case counts in the cities of Shenzhen, Shanghai and Chongqing.
The minutes of the meeting didn’t note discussion on how many people have died. They did cite Ma Xiaowei, the head of the NHC, reiterating the new, much narrower definition used to count Covid fatalities. While acknowledging that deaths will inevitably occur as the virus spreads rapidly, he underscored that only people who die from Covid-induced pneumonia should be included in the mortality statistics.
Officials said Beijing — which was hit first — is starting to see severe and critical Covid cases peak even as its overall infection rate is waning. Meanwhile, the outbreak is spreading from urban centers to rural China, where medical resources are often lacking. The agency warned every region to prepare for the coming surge in severe disease. The 37 million daily cases estimated for December 20 is a dramatic deviation from the official tally of just 3,049 infections reported in China for that day. It is also several times higher than the previous world record for the pandemic. Global cases hit an all-time high of 4 million on Jan. 19, 2022, amid an initial wave of omicron infections following its emergence in South Africa, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The scale of infection suggested by the official estimates underscores the challenge China faces after it abruptly pivoted from the Covid Zero regime that largely kept the virus at bay for the past three years. Hospitals in major Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai have been overwhelmed with a sudden surge in patients, while crematoriums struggle to handle the onslaught of deaths.
Renowned virologist and professor at the Bengaluru’s Christian Medical College’s division of gastrointestinal sciences tweeted Gangandeep Kang on Friday tweeted that mostly BF.7, causing a spike in coronavirus cases in many countries, including China are, like all Omicron sub-variants, very good at infecting people because they escape the immune response that prevents infection, but are not causing more severe disease than Delta. Kang said “at the moment, India is doing fine” but maintained that surveillance should be ensured to “detect signals of any changes in the behaviour of the virus”. India has reported a few cases of Omicron sub-variants XBB and BF.7, but they have not driven an upsurge, and she does not expect a spike in Covid cases. “China is opening up fast at a time when their population has low levels of exposure to natural infection, ‘’ she said, adding that “the current circulating variants are Omicron, which have evolved in vaccinated populations and are therefore very infectious”. Kang said most of China’s population has received two doses of vaccines.
