Virology professor Olli Vapalahti does not believe that new, more serious corona variants will spread from China.
12:44•Updated 13:04
Professor of Zoonosis Virology at the University of Helsinki Olli Vapalahti not in favor of stricter travel restrictions for Chinese tourists.
China relaxed corona restrictions in early December, and since then the number of infections has risen sharply. The United States and Italy have demanded negative corona test results from all tourists arriving from China.
In an interview with Radio Suomen Päivä, Vapalahti estimated that Chinese tourists are unlikely to significantly increase infections in Finland, because there are already a lot of corona infections.
– Even if half a planeload of infected Chinese come here, it won’t add much to it, Vapalahti states.
– At the moment, the situation in China does not pose a particular threat, but it is good to monitor the situation in a coordinated manner at the European level.
The Department of Health and Welfare is also on the same lines as Vapalahti, which is not recommending restrictions for tourists coming from China.
You can listen to the Radio Suomen Päivä interview in its entirety below. In the same broadcast, ‘s Asian correspondent Kirsi Crowley tells about the situation in China.
There is no need to fear new conversions, believes Vapalahti
It is difficult to get accurate corona figures from China, as the country reports infections sharply lower. An estimate was leaked from a closed meeting of China’s National Health Committee last week that in December, almost 250 million people would have been infected with the corona virus by the 20th of the month.
The spike in infections in China has also raised concerns about the emergence of a new, even more infectious virus variant. However, Vapalahti does not think that will happen.
The same virus variants that have been spreading in Western countries for a long time are now spreading in China. Due to the strict corona restrictions, the Chinese population does not yet have immunity to them.
New variants usually take over the field when the population is already immune to previous variants. So the virus does not “need” to have mutated in China, because even previous mutations spread effectively, Vapalahti clarifies.
– When there is a lack of immunity, the driver that would run immunity-circumventing modifications is missing.
Vapalahti points out, however, that the probability of transformations increases when there are hundreds of millions of infections.
You can discuss the topic until Friday 30.12. until 11 p.m.
Corrected on 29.12. at 1:04 p.m.: Corrected from the beginning information that China loosened corona restrictions in December. Earlier in the story, it was erroneously said that the restrictions were eased in January.