Burnet Institute epidemiologist Professor Michael Toole says the impact of the upcoming Lunar New Year period on China’s COVID-19 situation is “a big worry”.
“The Ministry of Transport in China estimates that there will be 2.1 billion trips made by Chinese during the Lunar New Year period,” Professor Toole told Sky News Australia.
“Now many of those will be back to families in remote rural villages where healthcare systems are very weak. “And most importantly for the world, there is no facility to do … genomic sequencing – to identify a new variant.”“So, I’d say the next four weeks is really critical both for China and, of course, the rest of the world,” he said.
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