” what variant is predominant in PRC?”
the last article I read says it’s BF.7 - an omnicron variant that has pretty good immunity evasion against both vaccinated and acquired immunity.
It’s been around since 2021, but hasn’t really grabbed a foothold in the northern hem. Entered China allegedly thru Mongolia and has spread rapidly. BF.7 accounts for about 5% of the cases in the US.’
The US is focused on a different omnicron variant XBB.1.5 - now accounting for about 75% of the cases in the northeast region: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/health/covid-variant-xbb-explainer/index.html
Hong Kong had a wave of Covid last February with 1,200,000 cases and about 9500 deaths. That’s about a 0.8% mortality rate.
During the summer, there were about 600,000 more cases but only another 2000 deaths, for a 0.3% mortality rate.
It seems likely that the CCP has data to substantiate that they will lose a few million people to Covid before vaccines and herd immunity take effect, but that they will mainly be elderly and sickly people.
They probably judge that this will be accepted by the people, since they were becoming very opposed to lockdowns and other public health measures.