{"id":563428,"date":"2026-07-28T11:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T11:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/563428\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T11:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T11:52:08","slug":"whats-behind-chinas-recent-spike-in-covid-19-cases-and-is-it-anything-to-worry-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/563428\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s behind China\u2019s recent spike in Covid-19 cases? And is it anything to worry about?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>China has seen a spike in <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/topics\/coronavirus-pandemic-all-stories?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Covid-19<\/a> in recent weeks, overtaking influenza as the top respiratory pathogen for the first time this year, but most patients experienced mild symptoms, while the medical authorities said data suggested the infection rate was significantly lower than last year\u2019s peak.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The spread of the Omicron NB.1.8.1 variant has reached a \u201cmoderate transmission level\u201d, according to the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The CDC does not give a weekly total of new infections, but its most recent data \u2013 covering the week of July 13-19 \u2013 showed the positive rate for Covid-19 tests had reached 16.3 per cent, an increase of 4.3 percentage points compared with the previous week. Meanwhile, the positive rate for influenza was 12.6 per cent, a fall of 0.9 points.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The positive rate is the percentage of all diagnostic tests conducted in hospital clinics that come back positive for a specific pathogen.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Last month, mainland China recorded 79,000 new confirmed Covid-19 cases, including 130 severe cases and one death, according to the CDC.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The CDC advised elderly people and those with underlying health conditions to take preventive measures, such as wearing masks in public places and hospitals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China has seen a spike in Covid-19 in recent weeks, overtaking influenza as the top respiratory pathogen for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1657,236569,1130,163,85,5196,46,255263,31144,5199],"class_list":["post-563428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-china","tag-chinese-centre-for-disease-control-and-prevention","tag-covid-19","tag-health","tag-il","tag-influenza","tag-israel","tag-omicron-nb-1-8-1","tag-transmission","tag-virus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}