Covid is BACK: 'Megawave' in China threatens entire globe - WHO issues stark warning

A Covid “megawave” sweeping across China is a threat to the entire world, the WHO have said in a stark warning.

Scientists predict that there will be over one million Covid-related deaths next year after China’s rapid lifting of lockdown restrictions caused a sharp spike in cases across the country.

China made the decision earlier in the month to abolish its “zero-Covid” approach which included mass lockdowns and testing.

The Chinese public grew increasingly frustrated at the measures, many of which the West have not had imposed on them in over a year.

Protesters began taking to the streets, using blank sheets of paper to express their anger in a rare, widespread outpouring of public dissent.

However, as a result of the restrictions being lifted, the virus has started to run rampant through the country, whose population sits at 1.4billion.

There are concerns that there is a severe lack of natural immunity across the country due to the long periods of shielding.

Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans said: “The question is whether you can call it post-pandemic when such a significant part of the world is actually just entering its second wave.

“It’s clear that we are in a very different phase [of the pandemic], but in my mind, that pending wave in China is a wild card.”

As recently as September, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said "the end is in sight" for the pandemic. Last week, he told reporters in Geneva that he was "hopeful" of an end to the emergency some time next year.

Alongside the risks for China, some global health figures have warned that allowing the virus to spread domestically could also give it space to mutate, potentially creating a new variant in line with how it has evolved when allowed to spread in other regions.

At the moment, data from China shared with WHO shows the variants circulating there are the globally-dominant Omicron and its offshoots, although the picture is incomplete due to a lack of full data.