Irish Examiner view: Covid news from China is not encouraging

As India reports cases of the BF.7 sub-variant, suggesting it has already escaped China, is there another lockdown in our future?

Patients at Baoding No 2 Central Hospital in Zhuozhou in China's Hebei province on Wednesday. Picture: Dake Kang/AP

Readers are probably winding down their Christmas exertions by now, with the crowded shops and thronged streets beginning to lose their appeal as the 25th of the month comes closer and closer. 

Still, with socially-distanced festivities still fresh in the memory, even the mild discomfort of a long checkout queue in the supermarket can come tinged with a vague sense of reassurance.

Perhaps those queues should be cherished, as the news coming out of China in the last week or so is not encouraging. 

Recent protests in that country against strict counter-measures to fight the spread of Covid were successful in so far as those measures are now being phased out, but the result is a sharp spike in the number of reported infections. 

A Covid variant, the BF.7 sub-variant of Omicron, is being blamed in part for that rise in infections.

With almost unimaginable numbers of sufferers in cities such as Shanghai, with its 25m inhabitants, this has led to sobering predictions. One hospital in that city has described the upcoming holiday season as the likely scene of a "tragic battle", predicting that half the city — more than 12m people — are destined to become infected with the virus.

Accuracy of figures

It is still difficult for outside observers to be definitive about the virus in China. Questions have been raised about the accuracy of the infection figures which have appeared in official reports, particularly in a country of approximately 1.4bn people. Medical experts have also raised doubts about the quality of some vaccines.

The World Health Organization has already aired its concerns about the latest news, and in the light of ominous anecdotal evidence such as footage of crowded wards in Beijing and stories of overworked crematoria and funeral homes around the country, those concerns seem well founded.

Whether that means a return to the grim days of 2020 for Ireland is unclear. 

If numbers continue to rise in China there must be a concern about the possibility of future mutations along the lines of the current variant; only yesterday India reported cases of the BF.7 sub-variant, which suggests it has already escaped China and is moving westwards. Is there another lockdown in our future?