Experts estimate that half of China's population will soon be infected with the COVID-19 virus.

The picture shows the emergency room of the Fourth People's Hospital of Langfang City, Hebei Province.

(Associated Press)

[Compiled by Chen Chengliang/Comprehensive Report] China's 3-year-long policy of "insisting on dynamic zeroing" has officially come to an end. Some medical experts estimate that half of China's population, equivalent to 700 million people, will be infected with the COVID-19 virus in the near future.

China has stopped releasing daily updates on the outbreak, with medical experts calling on Beijing to be more transparent about the genetics of the virus and warning that China's large population and limited immunity are a breeding ground for new variants amid a surge in cases.

After China's epidemic prevention measures were loosened, the symptoms of many infected patients were far worse than expected.

Over the past few days, the public and medical staff have revealed on Weibo that people infected with the virus have been diagnosed with severe pneumonia and even died of extreme "white lung" symptoms.

Whether China concealed the new variant virus is doubtful, and some people doubt whether the high-intensity Delta and Omicron were prevalent in China at the same time.

Please read on...

China's official media "Xinhua News Agency" quoted Xu Wenbo, director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Institute of Virology on the 27th, pointing out that there is no Delta epidemic in China, and there is no virus mutation.

He claimed that a total of 31 virus subclades have appeared in China since the beginning of December, including subclades such as BQ.1 and XBB that are spreading rapidly abroad, all of which belong to Omicron variant viruses, and no characteristic genome mutations have been found. And all imported from abroad.

The Associated Press quoted experts' opinions and emphasized that the virus variants are not necessarily milder. However, due to the lack of transparency in China's official information on the genetic sequencing of the Wuhan pneumonia virus, experts said it is difficult to judge the situation and study countermeasures.

The report mentioned that although China's overall vaccination rate is high, the level of vaccination boosters is low, especially in the middle and upper age groups.

In addition, there are data to prove that the efficacy of domestic vaccines in China is not as good as mRNA vaccines made in the West. In addition, many Chinese people were vaccinated more than a year ago, which means that immunity has gradually weakened.

Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray (Stuart Campbell Ray), an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University, believes that China has a large population but limited immunity. This environment may allow the outbreak of new variants of the virus.

He reminded that in the past year, many parts of the world have experienced mild infections, mainly due to vaccination or the immunity accumulated after infection, not the decline in the threat level of the virus itself.

Liu Shanlu, a virus research expert at Ohio State University, pointed out that many existing Omicron mutations, including BF.7, can now be detected in China.

Ben Cowling, chair professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, pointed out that the virus spread in China faster than anywhere during the pandemic.

He predicts that half the country's population will be infected before long.

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