COVID-19 in China: New COVID variant did not appear during the recent outbreak in China – Lancet report
Coronavirus in China: According to a report published in The Lancet Journal, no new variant of corona virus has been revealed in China. It said that the Omicron sub-variants BA.5.2 and BF.7 were the most prominent variants during the year 2022.
Abhilasha 
The two known Omicron sub-variants are primarily responsible for the recent surge of COVID-19 cases in China. No new variant of Corona has come to the fore here. This information has been published in The Lancet Journal on the basis of a study of corona cases in Beijing.
The analysis shows that Omicron sub-variants BA.5.2 and BF.7 were the most dominant variants during the year 2022 in Beijing. Because of these, more than 90 percent local infection had spread between 14 November and 20 December 2022.
Zero COVID policy was abolished on December 7
The researchers said that these results reflect the characteristics of the population of Beijing and the spread of highly infectious COVID-19 strains in China. Let us tell you that on December 7, 2022, China had announced to end its zero-covid policy on a large scale.
New variants were expected to emerge
Targeted lockdowns, mass testing and quarantining of people were part of the strict COVID-19 containment policies. However, since its end, the cases of corona started increasing. Due to this, concern was being raised that new variants of COVID could emerge.
The author is analyzing the sample
In the three years since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, variants such as alpha, beta, gamma, delta and omicron have emerged. Because of this, many waves of corona were born all over the world. The study authors, starting in December 2019, regularly collected and analyzed respiratory samples from local COVID-19 cases spread out of Beijing and randomly selected samples.
The study included 413 new samples randomly selected from a total of 2,881 high-quality sequencing reads between November 14 and December 20, 2022. This was the time when the corona infection started increasing rapidly. Of these, 350 were local cases and 63 were imported cases from patients from other countries and regions.
The researchers said that analysis of the 413 new sequencing reads showed that they all belong to existing known COVID-19 strains. That is, to put it simply, no new variant of Corona has been found.
