China now has denounced the decision to impose restrictions on Chinese Travellers because of the rising covert infections and warned it might take reciprocal action.
International Health officials have criticized Beijing for the virus and possible new variants the U.S. and about a dozen other countries will require those arriving from China to produce negative test certificates. Many Chinese have been rushing to book their first overseas trips in years after Beijing lifted its travel restrictions.
Well Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson condemned the requirements on Travellers we are willing to strengthen communication with the International Community and work hard together to overcome the epidemic at the same time we also believe that some countries have imposed entry restrictions targeting only Chinese Travellers this lacks scientific basis and some practices are unacceptable we firmly oppose any attempts. We will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity meanwhile in the United States concerns are increasing about a new highly contagious Omicron variant named xbb15 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed over 40 of covid-19.
Cases were caused by the new strain epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feingold ding is on the covid-19 mortality expert committee for the World Health Organisation and he told me there is cause for concern with the new subvariant XPS-15 is the next big one I think people have underappreciated CDC you know um just disclosed it was 40 but they had completely uh not disclosed that it's been surging for the prior four weeks and xbb15 is more invasive it's the most evasive variant known to date and unlike basic xbb, it is much better at infecting cells um based on what we know so it's in many if you look at the stats wherever it's dominant like in Northeast.
New England area of the US it has uh hospitalizations have surged and it's also surging worldwide in other countries and been found in other countries including in the UK where it's growing rapidly as well so this is the next big one and I think without good sort of genome surveillance um we would not have been aware that this is the new culprits but this is I think the variant to keep an eye on okay do we have any do we have any idea crucially on how effective the vaccinations that we currently have are against this for example hospitalisation numbers do we know how many of those are vaccinated or not yeah so this is the problem um like first of all to know the real world advocacy it takes time uh in enough numbers and the other thing is xdb uh one five is not a regular Omicron it is across a it's a recombinant crossbreed of two different lineages and so and uh and these are lineages of ba2 and so the for example the UK by valence is a ba1 by valence well the U.S Bion balance is a B5 by valence so neither of them are actually going to be perfect we're hopeful that it will work um against hospitalisation but against in terms of infection um and again infection leads to Long covid uh we're very worried and there's evidence that because it is so good at infecting with the human ace2 receptors that it could actually lead to worse long covet um because even low levels can cause huge amounts of problems.
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