Officials in several countries near China have expressed concern about the variant.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that the COVID-19 variant NB.1.8.1 is causing more infections worldwide, as China’s health agency said it’s the dominant variant.
The new strain was named as a “variant under monitoring” by the UN health body last week, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed a small number of cases were circulating in the United States.
WHO Says New Variant Spreading
WHO said in an update on May 28 that the variant is driving up cases in parts of the world and is currently spreading in Southeast Asia, the western Pacific regions, and the Mediterranean.
“The recent increases have been observed in four countries and areas to date: Cambodia, China, Hong Kong … and Singapore,” the UN group said.
The variant LP.8.1 is currently the dominant version worldwide, according to WHO. But both LP.8.1. and NB.1.8.1 have not shown signs that they would cause an “increased public health risk” when “compared to other circulating variants,” the U.N. health body stated.
Reports From China
In a recent update, the Chinese CDC said that NB.1.8.1 makes up the majority of cases in China, while some Chinese doctors have gone on record in state-run media to say that one symptom that is being reported is a sharply painful sore throat.
The Chinese CDC has been criticized over the years for not being transparent with its case and death figures throughout the pandemic. The Trump administration and some U.S. intelligence officials have said that the virus appeared to have emerged from a top-level laboratory in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attempted to cover it up and downplay its significance.
Some outside experts have questioned the actual death toll and case numbers reported by the regime since the pandemic’s start in early 2020.
Dr. Jonathan Liu, professor at the Canadian College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, director of the Kang Mei TCM Clinic, and skeptic of data Chinese CDC figures on COVID-19, said official data for March reported that seven people died from COVID-19 that month. He suggested in an interview with The Epoch Times that such a number is unreal.
“With normal epidemic rates, such a low figure is implausible. Canada, with a sparse population and good sanitation, reported 1,915 COVID deaths from August last year to May this year—over 200 per month. How could China, with its dense population, have only seven deaths monthly?” Liu told The Epoch Times last week.
The Chinese CDC also “has not reported the rate of severe cases, hospitalization rate, or mortality rate,” said Sean Lin, assistant professor at the Biomedical Science Department of Fei Tian College, former U.S. Army microbiologist, and Epoch Times contributor.
Other countries “cannot know the actual situation” in China because of the CCP’s attempts to downplay the true state of COVID-19 domestically, he added.
WHO’s recent update noted that new variant cases have increased in the western Pacific region, which includes China.
