A large number of Chinese citizens have posted on social media platforms in recent days disclosing their reinfection with COVID-19. However, the Chinese regime’s mouthpiece media outlet quickly published an article to deny that China is experiencing another wave of COVID-19.
Many people across the country claimed that they had been reinfected with COVID-19 and posted their positive antigens test results on social media. On April 20, “positive again” became the most searched term online in China.
Wei Min (pseudonym), a Nanjing resident, told The Epoch Times on April 23 that he began to develop symptoms on April 21. He bought a COVID-19 antigen reagent kit to test at home, and the result was positive.
"In fact, the virus is everywhere," he said.
Wei said he traveled to a different region in China on April 21 and that he may have been infected there. This is the second time he has been infected with COVID-19.
It has been more than five months since the peak of the COVID-19 mass infection occurred in mainland China at the end of last year. The reinfection cases have drawn increasing public attention.
China’s top virologist suggested that people prepare for another wave of outbreaks.
Zhang Wenhong, China’s director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases and director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Huashan Hospital, which is affiliated with Fudan University, said at the Infection and Immunity Summit on April 20 that as the virus mutates, COVID-19 reinfections will occur after six months. If the mutation of the new virus effectively breaks through the immune barrier formed by the human body in response to the previous wave of viruses, there will be a peak of infections in the next wave of the outbreak.
XBB.1.16 ‘Arcturus’
The public in China is concerned about new strains of the virus spreading in the country, such as XBB.1.16.XBB.1.16 is a recombinant strain of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 and is commonly known as "Arcturus." It has already caused fatalities. Thailand reported a death from XBB.1.16 earlier this month.
According to the data released by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention on April 22, from April 14 to April 20, 275 patients were infected with newly discovered key mutant strains, including 42 infections by XBB.1.16, and 12 local key mutant strains were newly detected. On April 15, the Chinese CDC reported the country's first 15 cases of XBB.1.16 infections, which means that it increased by 27 cases within a week.
The numbers might not reflect the true scale of the infections, as the Chinese Communist Party has concealed the truth of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country since the beginning of the pandemic, and it's difficult for the outside world to obtain accurate data.
According to Chinese media, the director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Run Run Shaw Hospital, affiliated with Zhejiang University School of Medicine, said that since the mutant strain XBB has been detected in the country, patients who have previously tested positive for COVID-19 may be reinfected with the mutated strain. Li Tong, chief physician of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Beijing Youan Hospital, said XBB.1.16 is more contagious but that the pathogenicity hasn't changed significantly.
The Chinese regime’s English media outlet Global Times quickly published an article on April 23 denying that China is experiencing another wave of COVID-19 outbreaks. It downplayed the possible scale of the next wave, citing Chinese virologists saying that “reinfection cases are rare” and that “the scale of the next wave won’t be huge.”
