SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, mutates constantly. Since the beginning 
of the pandemic three years ago, the virus has hit the world with different 
faces – Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and then Omicron – taking away millions of 
lives.

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and 
Prevention, said on Saturday at an annual meeting that if China's latest 
measures to ease restrictions had been taken at the beginning of this year, 
866,000 to 1 million COVID-related deaths would have occurred on the Chinese 
mainland in 2022.

By November when China announced its new policies to relax a series of 
stringent measures meant to monitor and cut the spread of COVID-19, the country 
had reported over 5,000 deaths caused by this virus.

The low death toll, out of a population of 1.4 billion, did not come easily. As 
many countries tried and gave up stricter measures one after another in the 
past three years, China didn't follow.

Over the past three years, whenever and wherever there was a resurgence of 
COVID-19, the local governments attempted to cut off the virus transmission as 
soon as possible, even though it meant a temporary slowdown of social mobility 
and economic activities.

The country has released and updated nine versions of the Diagnosis and 
Treatment Protocol for COVID-19, providing guidance for controlling the spread 
and timely treatment of COVID-19 patients.

A new edition will be released soon, Zhong Nanshan, China's renowned 
respiratory disease expert, said last week at a lecture on the fight against 
Omicron held by the Sun Yat-sen University, adding that the new edition will be 
conducive to economic development on the basis of active prevention and control 
of the pandemic. 

All these measures based on the latest situation and mutation of the virus were 
introduced in order to contain the virus spread in a more science-based and 
targeted manner, said China's National Health Commission.

Less lethal Omicron

Researchers have found that Omicron's pathogenicity and virulence have 
decreased, compared with COVID-19's previous strains.

A study led by researchers from the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong 
Special Administrative Region and Hainan Medical University in south China's 
Hainan Province, published in the journal Nature on January 21, showed that the 
replication and pathogenicity of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 in mice are 
attenuated compared with the wild-type strain and the Alpha, Beta and Delta 
variants.

Neeltje van Doremalen, a researcher at the Laboratory of Virology of the 
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under the United States' 
National Institutes of Health, gave a similar opinion in November in journal 
Science Advances. Data showed that Omicron replicates to lower levels than the 
Delta in rhesus macaques, resulting in reduced clinical disease.

China's next move amid Omicron

Chinese researchers are optimistic about the situation, with Omicron being the 
dominant virus for the time being.

Epidemiologist Wu said that the proportion of severe and critical cases of the 
disease among all confirmed cases in China has dropped from 16.47 percent in 
2020 to 3.32 percent in 2021. As of December 5, 2022, it was 0.18 percent.

Zhang Wenhong, head of the Center for Infectious Diseases with the 
Shanghai-based Huashan Hospital of Fudan University, said at a conference that 
with human's immune system gradually coming to a balance with Omicron, it was 
unlikely that a more contagious strain would jump out.

It is "a foregone conclusion" that China is coming out of this pandemic, and 
the trend is not going to reverse, Zhang said, but the elderly and other 
vulnerable groups still need to be properly protected, urging seniors to get 
vaccinated.

The Chinese government has recently released a plan aimed at ramping up 
vaccination among the elderly population in order to better protect this 
vulnerable group.

The plan calls for efforts to accelerate the increase of the vaccination rate 
among people aged 80 and above, and also to continue to raise the vaccination 
rate among people aged between 60 and 79.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on 
December 14 that he was "hopeful" that the COVID-19 pandemic would no longer be 
considered a global emergency some time next year.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-12-19/-New-Approaches-Alpha-to-Omicron-why-China-is-easing-COVID-controls-1fS73iihxZu/index.html


Source CGTN