China’s 1.4 billion people are just now catching the deadly Covid-19 virus in a big way. What that might mean for the rest of the world:
In China, however, things could get a lot worse before they get better. That’s because China locked down in early 2020 — and stayed locked down for nearly three years as part of the country’s “Zero Covid” policy. Only on Dec. 8, following widespread public protests in many major cities, did the ruling Chinese Communist Party“The situation completely changed on Dec. 8,” says Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at The University of Hong Kong.
So when restrictions lifted and a billion-plus Chinese finally started going out and traveling, they did so without the protection that the rest of the world earned the hard way, through past infection. More and more countries are testing travelers arriving from China. Malaysian health authorities are even testing the wastewater in passenger planes flying in from Chinese airports. Projecting from these samples, experts can begin tracking the Chinese outbreak, even without China’s help. “Ideally this would include virus samples for genomic sequencing in order to know whether a new and ominous variant of concern has emerged,” says Peter Hotez, an expert in vaccine development at Baylor College.
Consider that it cost the United States — a country with a billion fewer people than China — more than a million Covid deaths to build up the significant natural immunity it has today. “It’s a grim and tragic statistic,” says Eric Bortz, a University of Alaska-Anchorage virologist and public-health expert. “China is looking down that barrel right now.”
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