Should India worry about the increase in COVID-19 cases in China?

China, where the first coronavirus (COVID-19) cases emerged, is facing a new wave mostly fueled by the XBB variant since April. 

A recent report by Bloomberg noted that China could see as many as 65 million cases per week by the end of June. 

XBB is a combination of Omicron's a BA.2.10.1 and BA.2.75 subvariants. A study by Lancet dubbed XBB as the most immuno-evasive sublineage. 

But Dr Zhang Wenhong, who is the director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai said that the nation "should not go too far in taking pandemic preventive measures in response". 

A recent report by the Washington Post mentioned that Chinese officials are increasing vaccinations among the country's 1.4 billion citizens. 

This comes as the XBB variant of Covid mutated to escape protection built since China abandoned its tough "zero-Covid" policy last year. 

Experts have raised concerns that if the virus starts spreading, it may become a matter of global concern, forcing economies to impose restrictions. 

How will it impact India? 

India-based news outlet Hindustan Times quoted a member of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) as saying on the request of anonymity: "What China is seeing now, India is well past that stage and has emerged unscathed." 

"INSACOG bulletins issued around that time last year clearly mentioned that any increase in disease severity or hospitalisation was not observed over that period in India," the person further added. 

For the unversed, INSACOG is a joint initiative of the health ministry, the Department of Biotechnology, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and the Indian Council of Medical Research. 

The XBB variant is majorly responsible for the surge in cases, and in India, it was the most prevalent sublineage around November-December. INSACOG said that it caused at least 60 per cent of the total samples genome sequenced. 

The person further said, "China has been under complete lockdown for a significant period of time. Therefore, people didn't get to build immunity against the virus that was fast mutating." 

Covid cases in India

The Union health ministry data updated on Tuesday noted that India saw a single-day rise of 224 fresh coronavirus cases. While the active cases have decreased to 4,503. 

The death toll has increased to 5,31,867 with one death and the total tally of Covid cases was recorded at 4,49,90,278. 

According to the health ministry website, the active cases now comprise 0.01 per cent of the total cases, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has been recorded at 98.80 per cent. 

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,44,53,908 in the country, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.18 per cent.

According to the ministry's website, 220.66 crore doses of Covid vaccine have been administered in the country so far under the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive. 

(With inputs from agencies) 

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