Covid-19 testing requirements for passengers traveling from China highlight mounting concerns about the potential for undetected new strains of the virus spawned by the country\u2019s burgeoning outbreak.<\/p>\n
When the US imposed requirements for travelers from China to show negative test results, it also expanded a program that collects voluntary samples from international passengers at airports to help monitor variants entering the country. On Saturday, Canada said travelers from China, Hong Kong and Macau will need to produce a negative covid test, while Morocco went even further with a ban on visitors from China.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The latest restrictions come after the UK and\u00a0France<\/a>\u00a0on Friday joined the rush of countries testing passengers and sequencing samples from people arriving from China in an effort to identify any dangerous new mutations that could spread rapidly through their populations.<\/p>\n The scenario echoes the pandemic\u2019s early days, when China was criticized for\u00a0not releasing key genetic data<\/a>\u00a0on the virus until weeks after news of the new illness became public. The country\u2019s health officials have said that sentinel hospitals are monitoring mutations in samples taken from patients in emergency rooms and outpatient clinics. However, most of that data hasn\u2019t yet been shared internationally, health experts say.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn the absence of comprehensive information from #China, it is understandable that countries around the world are acting in ways that they believe may protect their populations,\u201d World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Twitter<\/a>. The global health group needs more detailed information from China in order to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment, he said.<\/p>\n Representatives from China\u2019s National Health Commission and the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration briefed WHO officials Friday on their strategy and actions to battle the outbreak.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWHO again asked for regular sharing of specific and real-time data on the epidemiological situation \u2014 including more genetic sequencing data, data on disease impact including hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths,\u201d the organization said in a statement. WHO officials stressed the \u201cimportance of monitoring and the timely publication of data to help China and the global community to formulate accurate risk assessments and to inform effective responses.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether China\u2019s outbreak has had any impact on Covid trends in the US isn\u2019t clear, according to Kristen Nordlund, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the agency is closely monitoring the situation, she said Friday in an email.<\/p>\n \u201cWith China\u2019s lack of population immunity against Covid-19 there is the possibility that a new variant of concern could emerge,\u201d Nordlund said.<\/p>\n Officials at\u00a0GISAID<\/a>, the consortium tracking Covid mutations, said they\u2019re reassured by a spurt of recent submissions from China. The group has received nearly 1,000 genetic sequences in the past week from across the country, provided by provincial health authorities and private health-care facilities.<\/p>\n \u201cThe variants continue to circulate without any significant changes that raise any specter of concern,\u201d said Peter Bogner, GISAID\u2019s founder. \u201cYou do not have any kind of data that suggest anything but business as usual.\u201d<\/p>\n In other parts of the world outside China where the virus is spreading rapidly, sequencing efforts that could identify new variants are falling off, Bogner said. Chinese health officials say that they\u2019ve promptly shared sequencing data with the WHO.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing we have kept to ourselves,\u201d Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the\u00a0Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, said Thursday. \u201cAll of our sequencing work has been shared with the whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n Nine omicron subvariants are dominating in the country\u2019s outbreak, Wu said. Limited sequencing data shared publicly show that the variants are largely the same as strains found elsewhere in the world, such as BF.7 and BA.5.2, according to the data analytics firm Airfinity, and there\u2019s no evidence yet that a new variant of concern has emerged. But it may only be a matter of time and with limited information being shared, it\u2019s difficult for the rest of the world to prepare, experts say.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe situation in China makes us very worried,\u201d said\u00a0Wilbur Lam<\/a>, who runs the US National Institutes of Health\u2019s\u00a0RADx Tech Testing Validation Core<\/a>\u00a0out of his labs at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. New requirements for travelers from China to show a negative test no more than two days before flying to the US aren\u2019t \u201ca perfect policy measure,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Viruses like Covid are able to mutate each time they reproduce. Sometimes the mutations are insignificant, or even prevent the virus from growing. But in rare cases, new mutations can grant advantages that allow particular strains to spread quickly.\u00a0<\/p>\n Keeping up with viral evolution has posed difficult challenges for drugmakers. For example, updated booster shots from Moderna<\/a> Inc. and the partnership of Pfizer<\/a> Inc. and BioNTech SE were designed to target early omicron variants B4 and B5. During the time those shots were developed, however, those variants were replaced by faster-spreading BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 variants.\u00a0<\/p>\n In recent weeks, another variant called XBB has picked up steam. Health experts are worried that these strains may be better able to evade immune protection from vaccines and prior infections, and perhaps give rise to offspring that are even more elusive.\u00a0<\/p>\n The BQ and XBB subvariants of omicron \u201cpresent serious threats to current Covid-19 vaccines, render inactive all authorized antibodies, and may have gained dominance in the population because of their advantage in evading antibodies,\u201d researchers from Columbia University wrote in a\u00a0study published<\/a>\u00a0this month in the journal Cell.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mutations in XBB, which is prevalent in the US Northeast, have rendered at least one Covid test made by DxTerity Diagnostics Inc. less reliable, US regulators said Thursday. In general, scientists are finding that it takes a bit longer for tests to turn positive when omicron infections are present, Lam said.<\/p>\n Despite the rapid growth of cases there, China may not yet be fertile ground for variants that evade humans\u2019 natural or vaccine-aided immunity, said\u00a0Sam Scarpino<\/a>, the director of Artificial Intelligence and Life Sciences at Northeastern University\u2019s Institute for Experiential AI. Relatively few people there have gained immunity conferred by vaccines or previous infections for the virus to genetically dodge. \u00a0<\/p>\n However, as infections continue to mount with scant mitigation measures in place to stop the virus from spreading in China, new variants could soon cause problems, Scarpino said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn a month or two, we want to be watching very closely for that,\u201d he said in an interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2013With assistance from\u00a0Immanual John Milton,\u00a0Dong Lyu,\u00a0Michelle Fay Cortez,\u00a0Fiona Rutherford\u00a0and\u00a0Jason Gale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Our new weekly Impact Report newsletter examines how ESG news and trends are shaping the roles and responsibilities of today\u2019s executives. Subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\nBusiness as Usual<\/h3>\n
\u2018Serious Threats\u2019<\/h3>\n