Chinese Epidemiologists Dismiss Concerns of a COVID-19 Second Wave and Reinfection

Discussions of COVID-19 reinfection have emerged among Chinese social media trends, after a group of users posted positive antigen results for the coronavirus. Epidemiologists have dismissed concerns about a second wave arriving and said most people currently infected with COVID-19 are now those who had not previously contracted the virus.

Recently, some netizens posted photos of positive antigen tests on Chinese social media, claiming they had been “re-infected” with COVID-19. A netizen from Nanjing told Chinese platform Xiaohongshu that five people in her family had tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days, nearly four months after they first tested positive in December last year.

A Beijing company on Sunday began investigating whether its employees had been infected with COVID-19 recently, and asked those who had contracted the virus to stay at home, the Global Times has learned. Similarly, a primary school in the province of Guangdong (south) has implemented a similar method for teachers and students.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), which monitors the number of COVID-19 infections and new variants, said on Sunday that health departments reported 2,661 positive cases of COVID-19 in Thursday. all the countries.

The COVID-19 positivity rate for Thursday was slightly higher than April 13. On March 13, the Chinese CDC announced that 1.3% of those who had taken a nucleic acid test were positive, up from Thursday’s rate of 1.7%.

Chinese epidemiologists have said they believe those who are infected twice are “rare cases”. Most of China’s COVID-19 infections at the current stage are people who escaped the first wave of massive infections late last year.

“From December to today, almost a third of those who were not infected during the last wave are gradually infected. Later, more and more of those who did not contract COVID-19 will be infected, but the peak will not even exceed 10% of the figure recorded in December last year,” assured Wang Guangfa, an expert. in respiratory diseases from Peking University First Hospital.

Thus, there will be no obvious pressure on Chinese hospitals and medical system, according to Wang, who however said he expected a second wave to occur in September this year.

Li Tongzeng, chief physician of the department of respiratory and infectious diseases at You’an Hospital in Beijing, told the Global Times that the risk of being re-infected with COVID-19 will increase, but most people infected a second times will have relatively milder symptoms, which means that the second wave will deal a less severe blow to the medical system than in December.

According to data from the China CDC, the number of COVID-19 infections in China peaked at 6.94 million a day on Dec. 22 last year and then started to gradually decline.

Speaking at a forum on Thursday, Zhang Wenhong, head of the infectious diseases department at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai and also director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, said surveillance data had shown that most infections current in China were people who had never contracted the virus before.

He noted that “if the coronavirus mutates, some people will be re-infected after six months. But the magnitude of these reinfections will not be huge. However, if the mutation manages to break through the immune barrier formed in the previous wave, a spike in infection could occur.”

The China CDC claimed to have detected 12 new variants in the country. The center found 42 cases of XBB.1.16 – dubbed “arcturus” – which has been the dominant variant in India since March. China CDC reassured the public, saying that there are a very small number of XBB.1.16 carriers, which have not yet formed a transmission trend.

Although the scale is not as huge as the previous wave, Zhang still called for stockpiling small molecule antivirals against COVID-19, and at the same time establishing a model that could treat patients with COVID-19 within 48 hours.

“I believe that constant monitoring and warnings as well as drug storage will allow us to respond quickly to any mutation and respond faster than the next infection spreads,” Zhang said.

The public is worried that infections will rise during the upcoming May Day holiday, as increased bookings are bound to lead to large-scale gatherings.

Wang said infections are likely to increase during the May Day holiday. “Yet the majority of people in China are vaccinated and many have already been infected, which means high level immunity among the public. »

“Large-scale infection is unlikely,” Wang added.