No new variants in weeks after China ended zero-COVID: study TheLancet
China saw an explosion of infections after starting to lift its strict pandemic measures from early December, sparking fears the world's most populous country could become a fertile breeding ground for new, more transmissible or severe strains.
But the new study by Chinese researchers, which analyzed 413 samples from Beijing sequenced between November 14 and December 20, said"there is no evidence that novel variants emerged" during that time. BF.7 accounted for three quarters of the samples, while more than 15 percent were BA5.2, according to the study published in"Our analysis suggests two known Omicron sub-variants—rather than any new variants—have chiefly been responsible for the current surge in Beijing, and likely China as a whole," lead study author George Gao, a virologist at the Institute of Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.
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