Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) on Tuesday said that the new Omicron variant CH.1.1 won’t cause another infection wave nationwide in the short term.

China CDC made the response as CH.1.1 variant triggered public concern in the country on Tuesday.

China has detected 24 imported cases infected with CH.1.1 variant and its subvariants from 15 countries and regions as of Monday, while no local related cases have been reported at present, according to the center.

We still need to pay attention to the pathogenicity of CH.1.1 variant, but now there is no evidence proving that its pathogenicity is increasing, said China CDC, adding that the infected cases need to reach a certain scale and last for a period of time before the pathogenicity of a new variant can be preliminarily judged.

Data from the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) shows the variant was first found in India on July 8 last year, the CDC introduced. It has been detected in over 60 countries and regions as of Monday, mainly popular in countries like the UK, Denmark, and Singapore, which accounted for about 25 percent in all COVID-19 cases in the UK in the past a month.

In addition, CH.1.1 variant has been on the rise in all variants in the U.S. since November 2022 and other variants affecting the U.S. are variants XBB.1.5、BQ.1.1、BQ.1, and XBB.