New Coronavirus News from 30 Dec 2022

China Covid: France, Spain, S Korea and Israel tighten rules [BBC, 30 Dec 2022]

By Kathryn Armstrong

France and Spain have announced Covid testing on visitors from China, following a similar decision in Italy.

The French government said passengers flying from China to France would have to present a negative Covid test less than 48 hours old before embarking.

Arrivals in Spain can skip the tests if they are fully vaccinated - and Spain does accept some Chinese vaccines.

Beijing has said it will fully reopen its borders next week for the first time since March 2020.
Its current Covid surge has caused wariness, with reports of hospitals filling up and waves of illness.

The UK, South Korea and Israel also announced new testing rules on Friday, while the US and India have already imposed restrictions.

• UK to need negative Covid test for China arrivals "At the national level, we will implement controls at airports and require travellers from China to present a negative Covid test or be fully vaccinated," said Spanish health minister Carolina Darias.

Neither France nor Spain have specified when the measures will come into force.

However, the French health and transport ministries said the government would publish a decree and notify EU member states.

On Thursday, the EU's disease prevention agency has said such measures were not justified in Europe, because of the levels of immunity and the fact that variants spreading in China were already present on the continent.

The World Health Organization, however, has said it was "understandable" that some countries had decided to impose restrictions and urged Beijing to be more forthcoming about its Covid numbers.

China's foreign ministry said earlier this week that its "epidemic situation" overall was "predictable and under control".

But the true toll of daily cases and deaths in China is unknown as officials have stopped requiring cases to be reported, and changed classifications for Covid deaths.

• Do restrictions on travel work against Covid?
South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said that travellers from China would need to have a negative PCR or antigen test before boarding flights to South Korea.

They will also need to undergo a PCR test within the first day of their arrival in South Korea.
Israel, meanwhile, has ordered foreign airlines not to allow people to travel from China unless they have tested negative - and asked its own citizens to avoid unnecessary travel there.

Not all countries have announced controls. Germany has joined Australia, France, and Portugal in saying there will be no new rules yet.

However, Germany's health minister has said the country is seeking a co-ordinated system to monitor variants across European airports.

China's decision this week to reopen its borders on 8 January marks the last stage of the country's controversial zero-Covid policy, which President Xi Jinping had personally endorsed.

As the rest of the world transitioned to living with the virus, Beijing maintained an eradication policy involving mass testing and stringent lockdown.

In November, the frustration spilled on to the streets in rare protests against Mr Xi and his government. A week later, Beijing began to roll back the restrictions.

New Coronavirus News from 5 Jan 2023

Covid Variant XBB.1.5: What Is the 'Kraken' and How Dangerous Is It? [Bloomberg, 5 Jan 2023]

By Low De Wei

What We Know About the ‘Kraken’ Covid Variant XBB.1.5 and Why It’s Causing Concern

WHO Calls for More Data From China as Covid Cases Surge

A new Covid variant that was first detected last year has quickly become the dominant strain in the US — and picked up a creepy moniker along the way.

Nicknamed the "kraken variant" by some, it surged through the nation and has now been identified in at least 28 other countries, according to the World Health Organization. Is it more dangerous? Does it spread more easily? And how will it affect China’s Covid outbreak?

Here are all your questions, answered:
What is the new variant?
XBB.1.5 is a descendant of the omicron XBB subvariant — which is itself a cross between two earlier strains: BA.2.75 and BA.2.10.1.

The original XBB variant has already caused waves of infection in countries including Singapore and India since the WHO first raised concern about it last October.

How fast is XBB.1.5 spreading?
While accounting for just 1% of all Covid cases at the start of December, estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that it surged to become the dominant strain by the end of the month, responsible for about 41% of all infections. In northeastern states, that figure has jumped above 70%.

XBB.1.5 is “the most transmissible sub-variant which has been detected yet,” said WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, during a press conference on Jan. 4. While only 29 countries have reported cases caused by it, health authorities are warning it could be much more widespread and silently proliferating thanks to a drop-off in testing.

In other countries, the proportion of infections caused by XBB.1.5 has remained lower, although the picture may rapidly change. Estimates from the Wellcome Sanger Institute found that the variant made up around 4% of Covid infections in England as of mid-December, while Canada has found a handful of such cases.

Scientists pointed out that the sub-variant has a much stronger affinity to ACE2, a key receptor for the virus, which allows it to bind more easily and boosts its transmissibility.

Is it more dangerous than previous variants?
There haven’t been significant differences in severity reported between cases caused by XBB.1.5 and previous variants. Like other strains that concerned scientists, however, XBB.1.5 is attracting attention because it is exhibiting signs of immunity escape. That means it has an ability to evade natural immunity or previous protection provided by vaccines, and re-infect people who have recovered from an earlier bout of Covid.

Data remains limited on XBB.1.5’s severity and its propensity to cause severe disease or death.

Previous therapies to tackle Covid — like monoclonal antibody treatments — were rendered ineffective by previous strains. That trend is set to continue with the new variant. Scientists in a recent peer-reviewed article published in the journal Cell warned that subvariants like XBB pose “serious threats” to current Covid vaccines. Higher transmissibility also means more people are likely to get infected, and thereby suffer severe outcomes.

It’s unclear if the US experience with XBB.1.5 will extend to other countries. America, unlike many other developed nations, suffers from low vaccination rates. Only 15% of the population aged five and above has received an updated bivalent booster dose. The rate is slightly better among the vulnerable elderly population, including those aged 65 and above, with fewer than four in 10 receiving the shot. Hospitalization rates for Covid are already rising, amid a surge in other winter-season infections like influenza.

The WHO plans to release an updated assessment on the variant’s risks in the coming days.

Has it reached China yet and what will be its impact?
China, which is going through a major wave of infections after dismantling its stringent Covid Zero policy in recent weeks, has yet to report any domestic cases of XBB.1.5. Shanghai has detected three infections caused by the variant and said all were imported cases. But health agencies across the world, including the WHO, have raised concerns that China isn’t providing enough genomic sequencing information to come to any definitive conclusions.

In the meantime, the country’s Covid wave is being driven by two other omicron strains: BA.5.2 and BF.7. Together they account for 97.5% of all local infections, according to genomic sequencing data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

While authorities have tried to allay fears that the XBB variants will drive new waves of infection, the public — already spooked by the strained healthcare system and limited availability of treatments — isn’t convinced. A widely circulated viral post claiming the XBB variant may lead to vomiting and diarrhea led to an anti-diarrheal medication selling out across China as panicked buyers snapped it up.

Where did the ‘Kraken’ name come from?
Covid variants are currently named by an expert group convened by the WHO. It identifies so-called variants of concern that have potential global public health significance, such as reducing the effectiveness of current pandemic measures, using the Greek alphabet. Previous strains like alpha, beta and delta fell under theconvention.

But the last Greek-named variant, omicron, emerged more than a year ago and left no room for the emergence of other, significantly different strains. Omicron has spawned multiple lineages, including XBB.1.5, and their names stem from a mix of alphabets and numbers known as “Pango.”

That has led to the rise in popularity of informal online nicknames, including “Kraken.” The moniker for XBB.1.5 was proposed by anevolutionary professor on Twitter to match the strength of the new strain with the mythological sea monster.

XBB.1.5 is a sub-lineage of the SARS-CoV-2 lineage XBB, and is currently estimated to have a large growth advantage over previously circulating lineages in North America (139%) and Europe (137%), although these estimates are associated with significant uncertainty. There is a possibility that this variant could have an increasing effect on the number of COVID-19 cases in the EU/EEA, but not within the coming month as the variant is currently only present in the EU/EEA at very low levels.

XBB.1.5 is a sub-lineage of XBB, with an additional spike RBD mutation S486P. This lineage was first detected in the US with sample collection dates as of 22 October 2022, and since then the lineage has been increasing. As of 3 January 2023, 3 456 sequences had been deposited in GISAID EpiCoV belonging to XBB.1.5, with the mutational profile in Spike region - Q183E, F486P and F490S. Most of these submissions are from the US (3 080 sequences), and the United Kingdom (106 sequences). The variant has also been detected in several other countries including EU/EEA countries – Denmark, France, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Belgium, Czechia, Portugal, and Ireland.

The lineage is currently estimated to have a large growth advantage over previously circulating lineages in North America (139%) and Europe (137%), although these estimates are associated with significant uncertainty. The US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (US CDC) report a doubling time of nine days in the proportion of XBB.1.5 and the US-CDC nowcast system estimates the current proportion of the variant to be around 40% in the US, with the variant likely to become dominant in the country within a week. The US CDC also presented growth data comparing XBB.1.5 to previously successful variants, indicating that XBB 1.5 exhibits the second highest growth advantage to date, second only to BA.1 (the original Omicron lineage). This does not necessarily mean that the variant will become dominant in the EU/EEA, since major differences in variant circulation have been observed between North America and Europe several times during the pandemic.

The most likely explanation of the growth advantage is the already high level of immune escape demonstrated by XBB, combined with the effect of the spike change S486P, which could provide either a transmissibility advantage, additional immune escape, or both. This mutation has previously been rare during the pandemic, probably due to it requiring two amino acid substitutions in the same codon to change from phenylalanine to proline. In fact, other variants with this change have emerged before without becoming successful. Further laboratory and epidemiological investigations are required to elucidate the mechanism of the growth advantage conferred by this change for the XBB variant specifically. There is currently not enough information available to assess any change in infection severity associated with the variant.

There is a possibility that this variant could have an increasing effect on the number of COVID-19 cases in the EU/EEA, but not within the coming month as the variant is currently only present in the EU/EEA at very low levels.

Novel indicator for the spread of new coronavirus disease 2019 and its association with human mobility in Japan [Scientific Reports, 5 Jan 2023]

Authored by Yuta Kawakami, Shuko Nojiri, Daisuke Nakamoto, Yoshiki Irie, Satoshi Miyazawa, Manabu Kuroki & Yuji Nishizaki

Abstract
The Japanese government adopted policies to control human mobility in 2020 to prevent the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, which causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The present study examined the impact of human mobility on COVID-19 cases at the prefectural level in Japan by devising an indicator to have a relationship between the number of infected people and on human mobility. We calculated origin–destination travel mobility within prefectures in Japan from March 1st to December 31st, 2020, using mobile phone data. A cross-correlation function (CCF) was used to examine the relationship between human mobility and a COVID-19 infection acceleration indicator (IAI), which represents the rate of change in the speed of COVID-19 infection. The CCF of intraprefectural human mobility and the IAI in Tokyo showed a maximum value of 0.440 at lag day 12, and the IAI could be used as an indicator to predict COVID-19 cases. Therefore, the IAI and human mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic were useful for predicting infection status. The number of COVID-19 cases was associated with human mobility at the prefectural level in Japan in 2020. Controlling human mobility could help control infectious diseases in a pandemic, especially prior to starting vaccination.

Scientific Reports volume 13, Article number: 115 (2023)

These Countries Are Imposing COVID-19 Restrictions on China [TIME, 5 Jan 2023]

BY YASMEEN SERHAN

s COVID-19 infections in China continue to rise, and as concerns grow over the reliability of the country’s reporting and sequencing of cases, more than a dozen countries have announced new entry restrictions on travelers arriving from China at a time when they’re largely on the way out.

Some countries, including the United States and Britain, are reintroducing compulsory pre-flight COVID-19 tests for people flying from China. Others, such as Japan and Italy, are requiring testing upon arrival and quarantine for those who test positive. One country, Morocco, has even decided to ban entry to all travelers coming from China outright in a measure that will go into force on Tuesday.

The new restrictions haven’t gone down well in Beijing, which in a stunning reversal began dismantling its draconian zero-COVID policies last month following rare public protest. Chinese state media labeled the new testing requirements “discriminatory” and a politically-motivated effort to undermine the Chinese government. Meanwhile, some public health experts have cast doubt on the effectiveness of these measures. “Trying to ban a virus by adjusting what we do with travel has already been shown not to work very well,” Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told the BBC.

As China prepares to lift its own border restrictions on Jan. 8, here are the countries that have announced their own restrictions on travelers from the country so far.

Italy

Italy was among the first to announce new entry requirements for travelers arriving from China, with its health minister announcing on Dec. 28 that all airline passengers would be subject to mandatory testing upon arrival. Italy is the first and only European country to require such testing so far. Among one of the first flights subjected to testing, more than a third of all its passengers tested positive for COVID-19. On another flight, half of the passengers tested positive.

The United States
On Dec. 28, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the U.S. will require travelers arriving from China, Hong Kong, and Macau to present a negative COVID-19 test taken no more than two days before their departure. The new restrictions, which go into effect on Jan. 3, come amid rising concerns over China’s lack of transparency over its outbreak as well as its failure to adequately track and sequence variants within the country.

“Variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus continue to emerge in countries around the world,” the CDC said in its announcement. “However, reduced testing and case reporting in the [People’s Republic of China] and minimal sharing of viral genomic sequence data could delay the identification of new variants of concern if they arise.”

France
From Jan. 5, the French government announced that it will require travelers from China to present a negative COVID-19 test no less than 48 hours before departure. Passengers will also be required to wear a mask in flight and commit to undergo random testing on arrival.

The United Kingdom
From Jan. 5, travelers from China to the U.K. will be required to show a negative COVID-19 test taken no more than two days prior to departure. In addition, a sample of passengers will also be subject to testing upon arrival.

“The decision has been taken to introduce these measures specifically for China arrivals due to a lack of comprehensive health information shared by China,” the country’s health department said in a statement. “If there are improvements in information sharing and greater transparency then temporary measures will be reviewed.”

Spain
From Jan. 3, the Spanish government will require travelers arriving from China to provide a negative COVID-19 test or proof of vaccination. For the latter, Madrid said that it would accept any vaccine recognized by the World Health Organization, which includes Chinese-made Sinovac and Sinopharm.

Around one-third of China’s population—over 250 million people—have not received a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The figure climbs to 60% for those aged 80 and up.

Germany
Following new European Union recommendations for member states, the German government announced on Jan. 5 that it too will introduce compulsory COVID-19 rapid tests for travelers arriving from China, as well as random checks upon entry and expanded monitoring of wastewater. Berlin did not say when the new measures would come into force.

Sweden
Also following E.U. guidance, the Swedish government announced that from Jan. 7, travelers arriving from China will be required to provide a negative Covid-19 test upon entry. The new requirements, which will be in place for three weeks, will not apply to Swedish citizens, permanent residents, or those residing in the European Union or the European Economic Area.

Australia
From Jan. 5, people traveling from China, Hong Kong, and Macau to Australia will be required to show a negative COVID-19 test taken within 48 hours prior to travel. “This is a temporary measure reflecting the lack of comprehensive information right now about the situation in China,” said Mark Butler, Australia’s health minister.

Canada
From Jan. 5, all air travelers over the age of two arriving from China, Hong Kong, and Macau will be required to provide a negative COVID-19 test no more than two days before their departure or proof of a recent COVID-19 infection. The measures will be reassessed after 30 days, according to Canada’s public health agency. Masking in-flight will be strongly recommended, but not required.

Japan
Japan, which was among the first countries to impose new entry requirements, has from Dec. 30 required that all travelers from China (excluding Hong Kong and Macau) submit to testing on arrival. Those who test positive will be required to quarantine for seven days.

South Korea
From Jan. 5, travelers from China will be required to undergo a COVID-19 test before and after arriving in the country, the government announced on Dec. 30. South Korea also said that it would also restrict issuing short-term visas for Chinese nationals until the end of the month and temporarily halt increasing flights between the neighboring countries.

India
As of Jan. 1, India announced that it will require travelers arriving China and Hong Kong, as well as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand, to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test no more than 72 hours prior to departure. The Indian government previously announced that it would also begin testing 2% of international arrivals for COVID-19 at random.

Malaysia
On Dec. 30, the Malaysian government announced that it will begin screening all inbound travelers from China and elsewhere for fever, and will administer those who are detected to have a fever or other symptoms with a COVID-19 test. The government said it would also test wastewater on aircrafts arriving from China in a bid to detect new variants.

Israel
Israel announced on Dec. 30 that all non-Israeli travelers arriving from China would be subject to pre-flight PCR tests taken within 72 hours before departure.

Qatar
From Jan. 3, all travelers from China must submit a negative COVID-19 test within 48 hours of departure, regardless of their vaccination status.

Morocco
From Jan. 3, all travelers from China regardless of nationality will be banned from entering Morocco. The announcement, which came just days before the ban was due to be imposed, is the strictest measure yet taken by any country in response to China’s surge in cases.

Countries that aren’t imposing restrictions
While most countries have not announced new entry requirements for travelers arriving from China, a select few have ruled them out entirely. These include Poland and Bulgaria, both of which declined to adopt new entry requirements in line with the E.U.’s recommendations (which member states are strongly encouraged, though not required, to adopt).

New Zealand’s government said that it too would not adopt new measures on the basis that visitors from China pose a “minimal public health risk” to the country. However, the government said that authorities will ask some travelers from China to submit to voluntary tests, as well as introduce pilot testing of wastewater from international flights.