Though China has largely stopped reporting COVID-19 cases, evidence of its massive wave of infections easily emerges at airports outside its borders.
On a Dec. 26 flight from the southeastern city of Wenzhou to Milan, Italy, 42 percent of the 149 passengers on board tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival, according to reports a study published Thursday in the journal Eurosurveillance.
The Italian researchers behind the study also looked at the test positivity rates of three other flights from eastern cities in China to Italy, two to Milan and two to Rome, all in late December. Overall, 23 percent of passengers on the four flights (126 out of 556 passengers) were positive for SARS-CoV-2. The other three flights had positivity rates of 19 percent, 11 percent, and 14 percent.
The passengers were tested with either rapid antigen tests or PCR tests. Positive antigen tests were confirmed with PCR testing. The tests most likely caught people with mild or asymptomatic cases, as well as those who had recently recovered. PCR tests can remain positive for weeks after infection.
Similar to the Italian data, the Washington Post reported seeing them about a week ago Data from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency This indicates that 23 percent of short-term visitors to Korea from China (314 out of 1,352 tested at the airport) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 between January 2 and 6.
The rates reveal a mass infection in China that is expected but not well documented. When China abruptly abandoned its zero-COVID policy last month, it dropped mass testing and largely stopped reporting cases. Meanwhile, the virus has torn apart what the Italian researchers note is “a highly vaccinated but infection-naïve population.”
Current models assume that this could be the case 1.5 million new infections every day in China, and over 1 million could die in the coming weeks. Health experts are particularly concerned about the spread of disease during the upcoming Lunar New Year on January 22, when tens of millions of people travel across China to visit family for the celebrations. The movement is expected to shift high transmission from major cities to more vulnerable rural areas.
Benjamin Cowling, epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, said the Washington Post that the infection numbers so far “are completely in line with forecasts that the majority of the population of large cities has already been infected”.
Good news is that the Italian researchers performed a full genome sequencing of the virus from 61 passengers and found no new or alarming variants in this sampling. Sampling revealed the Omicron sublineages BA.5.2, BF.7 and BQ.1.1 seen elsewhere. The data is consistent with reports elsewhere and from China.
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