Bloomberg reports the tsunami of Covid-19 that’s taking hold across China is spurring concern that a dangerous new virus variant could emerge for the first time in more than a year, just as genetic sequencing to catch such a threat is dwindling.

The Financial Times reports that internal modelling estimates 250 million people – a fifth of the population – caught Covid in the first 20 days of December 2022.

Chinese officials estimate about 250mn people, or 18 per cent of the population, were infected with Covid-19 in the first 20 days of December, as Beijing abruptly dismantled restrictions that had contained the disease for almost three years. The estimates — including 37mn people, or 2.6 per cent of the population, who were infected on Tuesday alone — were revealed by Sun Yang, a deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in a Wednesday health briefing, said two people familiar with the matter. Sun said the rate of Covid’s spread in the country was still rising and estimated that more than half of the population in Beijing and Sichuan were already infected, the people briefed on the meeting said.