Impact of National Omicron Outbreak at the end of 2022 on the future outlook of COVID-19 in China
Liwei Zheng, Shuying Liu, Fengmin Lu
Abstract
The sudden change of public health policy in containing COVID-19 in China around 7 December 2022 and the subsequent immediate large-scale outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections in the entire country across different age groups with various baseline health conditions raised the critical question on how such major event would impact the future COVID-19 status in the country and even to the world.The current commentary attempts to use the global COVID-19 data and information accumulated in the last 3 years to analyse the interactions between evolving virus strains and human immunity, which will shape the scenarios of COVID-19 in the coming year.Awaken by the initial outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China took a strict lockdown approach in the whole country, which was successful in controlling the outbreak of the first SARS in 2002-2003.This approach succeeded again in putting down SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in Wuhan and other major cities in the country in early 2020.However, SARS-CoV-2 evolving into a global pandemic forced China to adopt a zero-COVID policy for more than 2 years during which international travel was severely restricted with anyone coming to China being heavily screened for COVID along with lengthy quarantine after entering the country.Any isolated domestic cases of COVID would trigger a full-scale lockdown for the local district or even expanding to the whole city.While the economic cost for such policy was high, the zero-COVID-19 policy during the 2020-2021 period made China a rare country with infrequent confirmed COVID cases and limited mortality while the rest of the world suffered a full scale of SARS-CoV-2 spread with millions of cases of deaths.