The immunity in China's population relates to different vaccines than have been given in other countries - and the Chinese don't have the extra immunity developed by waves of Covid. Photo / AP
The immunity in China's population relates to different vaccines than have been given in other countries - and the Chinese don't have the extra immunity developed by waves of Covid. Photo / AP
China has been accused of withholding Covid data as it emerged it has shared fewer than 1000 Covid virus samples with the international scientific community over the past month, the Telegraph can reveal.
US, British and other countries’ health experts are worried that China’s “secretive” approach means they will have to introduce their own testing regimes to detect and protect against the emergence of any new variant.
The concerns have been fuelled by data seen by The Telegraph which show that since November 29, the Chinese Government has uploaded just 940 virus sequences to the online depository Gisaid, a global pathogen database that allows scientists to identify and track emerging Covid variants.
These sequences detail the genetic composition of each infection and reveal whether the Covid virus has obtained dangerous mutations. If this data is limited, it could blindside the rest of the world should a new variant arise, experts say.
A pharmacy staffer attends to customers near empty shelves in a pharmacy as residents buy up medicine to prepare for the wave of Covid-19 outbreak in Beijing. Photo / AP
China has also reported 644,671 cases to Gisaid, according to data publicly available on the platform — a tiny proportion of the 250 million infections estimated by Chinese health officials to have occurred in the 20 days to Christmas.
By contrast, the UK has shared 7325 Covid sequences with Gisaid over the past month from 138,041 cases and Denmark has published 8723 sequences out of 31,629 reported cases – or 27.5 per cent.
Earlier this month, the US and World Health Organisation both urged Beijing to be more transparent in sharing data on case counts, disease severity, hospital admission figures and other health statistics that have been made widely available by other nations.
Amid the uncertainty, Malaysia announced on Friday it will screen body temperatures of all inbound travellers, including those from China, to monitor for fever as part of measures to prevent an outbreak of the coronavirus. Health Minister Zaliha Mustafa said they were also introducing tests on wastewater from aircraft arriving from China for Covid.
The US, Japan, Italy, India and Taiwan have also announced tests for travellers from China following claims the country is suffering as many as a million new infections a day following the ending of its zero Covid policy.
UK ministers are keeping potential measures “under review” but at present are resisting reintroducing tests for travellers from China as there is no evidence of a new variant.
One option being considered is for Covid tests taken by people arriving from China into the UK to be prioritised for genomic sequencing in a bid to spot new variants.
‘Secretive society’
Anyone who takes a PCR test – such as people in hospitals or care homes – will be asked if they have recently travelled to China.
Their samples will be fast-tracked for sequencing in labs to detect any new variants potentially introduced from China.
It follows calls by former health minister Steve Brine, chairman of the Commons health committee, for ministers to introduce restrictions as China could not be trusted to provide accurate data on the scale of the outbreak or variants. “China is such a secretive society we know their data is withheld and unreliable,” he said.
“We have every right to over- not under-react. Public confidence is such that we know the lesson of two years ago was that time is of the essence. The public are a bit bemused that we are in this place, seemingly not having learned,” he said.
The US issued similar warnings when it announced its plans to require all travellers from China to have a negative test before arrival from January 5, three days before China’s lifting of travel restrictions take effect.
A senior US health official said: “The recent rapid increase in Covid-19 transmission in China increases the potential for new variants emerging.
“We have just limited information in terms of what’s being shared related to the number of cases that are increasing, hospitalisations and especially deaths. Also, there’s been a decrease in testing across China so it also makes it difficult to know what the true infection rate is.”
‘Banning’ virus doesn’t work
It came as one of the Government’s top scientific advisers played down fears about China’s surge in Covid cases and suggested fresh border restrictions are not necessary.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, a government adviser who helped develop the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, said “trying to ban a virus” through travel curbs had “‘already been shown not to work very well”.
Professor Pollard, chairman of the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation, also suggested that, even if a new Covid variant were to emerge in China, its impact in Britain would be limited due to the high levels of immunity already in existence in the UK.
“Trying to ban a virus by adjusting what we do with travel has already been shown not to work very well. We have seen that with the bans on travel from various countries during the pandemic,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
“The important thing is that we have surveillance that when a virus is spreading within our population here in the UK or Europe, we are able to pick that up and predict what might happen with the health systems and particularly the more vulnerable in the population.”
China's National Health Commission scaled down its daily Covid-19 report in response to a sharp decline in PCR testing since the Government eased antivirus measures after daily cases hit record highs. Photo / AP
‘Keep calm, we’ve got this covered’
Prof Pollard said any new variant that did appear in China was likely to be best-adapted to spreading in the Chinese population.
“The immunity in the population currently relates to vaccines that have been given in the population over the last couple of years and are different to the vaccines we have had and they have not had the extra immunity from having waves of Covid,” he said.
“Testing people travelling from China probably doesn’t really answer the question about whether any new variant that is detected is going to be a problem here.”
Fellow experts also sought to assuage concerns about the sharp increase in Covid cases in China, as they pointed to the robustness of British vaccines.
“Keep calm, we’ve got this covered,” said Prof Calum Semple, an expert in outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool.
Prof Allyson Pollock, a public health expert at Newcastle University, said introducing new border controls “really doesn’t make sense” as Covid is already “endemic” in Britain.
‘Emergency talks’
The EU will hold emergency talks next week to assess the “evolving situation”, officials said, although the meeting of the Integrated Political Crisis Response Mechanism is unlikely to impose testing requirements on Chinese travellers unless the situation is worsening.
Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said extra monitoring would be needed after January 8 when China lifts travel restrictions for Chinese nationals.
New measures are expected to include surveillance of wastewater, including sewage from airports, to track the spread of the virus and the emergence of new variants.
It came as Spain said it would join Italy, the United States, India, Japan, Malaysia and South Korea in reintroducing pandemic control measures for visitors from China in anticipation of an increase in travellers from next week.
Those arriving in Spain from China must provide a recent negative test or prove they have been fully vaccinated against Covid, Health Minister Carolina Darias said on Friday.
