Latest report! China CDC: Influenza virus positive rate is still rising

On March 18, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention released the latest situation of the national novel coronavirus infection epidemic. From December 1, 2022 to March 16, 2023, a total of 86 local key variants were found.

According to the data from the official website of the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since December 9, 2022, the number of positive nucleic acid tests and the positive rate of the new coronavirus reported by various provinces have shown a trend of first increasing and then decreasing. The number of positive people reached a peak on December 22 and then fluctuated and decreased, and dropped to 4,917 on March 16, 2023; the positive rate of the test peaked on December 25, 2022 and then fluctuated and decreased, and was 0.8% on March 16, 2023. The number of positive antigen tests and the positive rate of the new coronavirus have increased rapidly since December 9, 2022, reaching a peak on December 22 (337,000, 21.3%), and then fluctuated and decreased. On March 16, 2023, the number of positives dropped to 194 (the positive rate was 0.4%).

The number of patients visiting fever clinics (excludes Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) nationwide (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) reached a peak of 2.867 million on December 23, 2022, and then declined continuously; after January 23, 2023, the number of patients fluctuated at a low level, and in the past three weeks (February 24 to March 16), after the increase in fluctuations, it began to show a platform fluctuation, reaching 483,000 on March 16, a decrease of 83.2% from the peak.

In the 49th week of 2022 (December 9), the positive rate of influenza-like cases for COVID-19 began to increase gradually, reaching a peak during the 51st and 52nd weeks and then continued to decline. In the 7th week of 2023 (February 13-19), the positive rate of COVID-19 dropped to 3.4% and then rebounded slightly. It continued to decline for nearly two weeks, and the positive rate of COVID-19 was 2.7% in the 10th week (March 6-12). Since the 49th week of 2022, the positive rate of influenza virus has gradually decreased, and it was at an extremely low level (below 1.0%) from late December to early February; since the 6th week of 2023 (February 6-12), the positive rate of influenza virus has been on the rise, reaching 53.2% in the 10th week of 2023.

From December 1, 2022 to March 16, 2023, a total of 24,789 local cases of novel coronavirus genome sequences were reported nationwide, all of which were Omicron variants, with a total of 62 evolutionary branches. The main epidemic strains were BA.5.2.48 (50.0%), BF.7.14 (26.4%) and DY.1 (8.9%).

**A total of 86 local key variants were found, **including 4 cases of BQ.1, 2 cases of BQ.1.1, 1 case of BQ.1.1.17, 1 case of BQ.1.1.38, 2 cases of BQ.1.1.66, 1 case of BQ.1.1.69, 6 cases of BQ.1.2, 2 cases of BQ.1.8, 1 case of DT.2, 2 cases of XBB.1, 2 cases of XBB.1.11.1, 1 case of XBB.1.12, 27 cases of XBB.1.5, 1 case of XBB.1.5.5, 7 cases of XBB.1.5.7, 2 cases of XBB.1.9, 16 cases of XBB.1.9.1, 5 cases of XBB.1.9.2, 1 case of XBB.2.3 and 2 cases of XBB.3.

In general, BF.7 and its subbranches are the dominant strains in Beijing , Inner Mongolia and Tianjin; BA.5.2 and its subbranches are the dominant strains in other provinces.

Source: Beijing Evening News official account