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BEIJING, Dec. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/ --

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