Infectious disease experts say the strategy is more effective at slowing the spread of the virus than the new restrictions, as the health tech company says thousands of other people are likely to die every day in China.
USA. The U. S. is taking sewage samples from foreign aircraft to track any new emerging variants of Covid-19 as infections rise in China, while UK-based fitness experts estimate that around 9,000 people die per day from the disease in China.
The proposal from the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and PreventionUU. de controlling wastewater would provide a better solution for tracking the virus and delaying its access to the U. S. The U. S. Centers for Health and Prevention announced this week, 3 infectious disease experts said.
The United States and several other countries have said travelers from China will want mandatory negative covid tests.
His comments came as British fitness data company Airfinity said roughly 9,000 other people in China were likely dying every day from Covid, nearly doubling its estimate from a week ago.
Covid infections began spreading across China in November, accelerating this month after Beijing dismantled its zero-covid policies, added normal PCR tests on its population and released information about asymptomatic cases.
The cumulative number of deaths in China since Dec. 1 has likely reached 100,000, with total infections at 18. 6 million, Airfinity said Thursday. It used models based on knowledge of Chinese provinces before implementing recent adjustments in case reporting, he said. .
Airfinity expects covid infections in China to reach their peak on January 13 with 3. 7 million daily cases.
Their numbers contrasted with the several thousand cases reported by the Chinese health government every day, after a nationwide network of PCR testing sites was largely dismantled and the government shifted from infection prevention to treatment.
The European Union’s fitness firm said Thursday it believes the EU-wide arrival of mandatory covid for travelers from China is lately “unjustified,” noting “increased population immunity in the EU/EEA, as well as the earlier and upcoming emergency replacement of variants circulating lately in China. “
But in a series of tweets, World Health Organization leader Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus renewed his call for China to be more open with detailed knowledge about the pandemic in the country.
“In the absence of complete data from China, it is understandable that countries around the world are acting in ways that can protect their populations,” Tedros wrote.
Airfinity expects deaths to peak on Jan. 23 with about 25,000 in one day, and cumulative deaths to reach 584,000 since December. Since December 7, when China took a radical turnaround, the government has officially reported 10 covid deaths.
Internationally, restrictions such as mandatory testing have so far failed to particularly slow the spread of covid and largely serve as optics, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota.
“They seem essential from a political point of view. I think each and every government feels like they will be accused of not doing enough for their citizens if they don’t,” he said.
The United States also this week expanded its voluntary genome sequencing program at airports, adding Seattle and Los Angeles to the program. This brings to seven the total number of airports collecting test data.
But experts said it doesn’t provide a significant pattern size.
A better solution would be to check airline wastewater, which would give a clearer picture of how the virus mutates, given the lack of knowledge transparency in China, said Dr. Eric Topol, a genomics expert and director of the Scripps Translational Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
Removing sewage from China’s planes “would be a very clever tactic,” Topol said, adding that it was vital for the United States in its surveillance tactics “because China is very reluctant to share its genomic data. “
China said the complaint about its covid statistics was baseless and downplayed the threat of new variants, saying it expects the mutations to be more infectious but less severe. United: Impose new testing regulations on Chinese visitors when Beijing lifted controls.
Analyzing aircraft wastewater is one of the functions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help slow the arrival of new variants in the U. S. The U. S. spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund is in the U. S. , from other countries, said company spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund.
“Previous Covid-19 wastewater tracking has proven to be a valuable tool and aircraft wastewater tracking can potentially be an option,” he said in an email.
French investigators reported in July that sewage tests from aircraft had shown that the need for negative covid tests before foreign flights did not affect countries from the spread of new variants. They discovered the Omicron variant in the sewage of two advertising planes that flew from Ethiopia to France in December 2021, even though passengers had to pass Covid tests before boarding.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to the report.