China's Covid chaos could send the rest of the world back to square one in the fight against the pandemic, experts warned today.
Hospitals have been overwhelmed and morgues have filled up since Beijing U-turned on its controversial zero Covid policy last month. Up to a million people could die from the virus in the coming months, according to startling projections.
Low immunity — down to poor vaccination rates and a lack of previous infections —is thought to be driving the wave.
Now, experts are warning the fresh outbreak, which shows no signs of slowing, could potentially have global ramifications — including for Britain and the US.
Professor Martin McKee, an expert in public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said China's capitulation risks the rise of new strains.
He told MailOnline: 'The pandemic is far from over.
'And we are still seeing almost 1,300 people in hospital with Covid in England every day, at a time when the NHS is struggling with high rates of flu.
'Until now China has kept deaths very low but has failed to use the time to get vaccination rates up, especially among older people.
'This has consequences for China, with high death rates and possible political instability, but also for the world, with the risk of new variants and supply chain disruptions.
'Unfortunately we still have a great deal to do to increase vaccination rates globally, but also to reinvigorate efforts on pandemic preparedness.'
Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at the University of Reading, told MailOnline: 'It's right to say that the pandemic isn't over, the developed world has just moved into a different phase.
'The threat of new variants will always be with us and the lack of immunity conferred by vaccination in some parts of the world just makes that more likely, and I think it's doubtful that it would ever completely eliminate that risk.
'We've seen previously how easily variants are flown around the world and I think it's unlikely that there is the political will to stop it happening again.'
Professor Peter Hotez, a virologist at Baylor University in Texas, said the surge could lead to new strains like the deadly Delta variant which fuelled the West's spring 2021 wave.
He tweeted: 'The unchecked spread of Covid among a large unvaccinated or under-vaccinated population in China could [...] promote new variants [...] similar to the emergence of Delta among an unvaccinated population in India in early 2021.'
But not all pandemic-watchers are as concerned.
The BF.7 Omicron sub-strain thought to be behind the current outbreak has not been shown to have an advantage on variants in the West.
Professor Paul Hunter, a public health expert at the University of East Anglia, said: 'I don't think the situation in China will pose a substantial additional risk to many other countries. After all, most of the rest of the world has hybrid immunity.
'It is said that it is the BF.7 variant of Omicron that is driving the wave in China but at a global scale this variant does not appear to have any growth advantage against other variants.
'Yes another variant could arise and probably will arise, they are doing so all the time, but each new variant seems to have decreasing incremental benefit over previous ones.
'Also hybrid immunity has provided good cross protection against severe disease from new variants as well as older variants.'
Professor David Livermore, a microbiologist at UEA, said the less effective jabs used in China are also unlikely to select for vaccine immunity-evading variants.
Chinese Covid vaccines — Sinovac and Sinopharm — are widely considered to be less effective than the mRNA vaccines used in most other nations.
He told MailOnline: 'I don't think this surge has major implications for the rest of the world.
'Whilst the Chinese vaccines are not particularly effective they are, at least, targeted against the whole virus, inducing antibodies to multiple viral proteins. This should make it harder for the virus to mutate away from them.
