HONG KONG — China has no plans to further tighten its border restrictions to contain the spread of the new and potentially more contagious Omicron coronavirus variant, leading Chinese experts said on Sunday (Nov 28).

A number of countries have limited travel to and from southern Africa since Friday, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a new Covid-19 variant detected in South Africa as one "of concern".

The variant, called Omicron, has a large number of spike protein mutations and is the fifth variant to be given the designation.

Cases have already been detected in Hong Kong, Britain, Belgium, likely Germany and Italy, but Dr Zhong Nanshan, one of China's top respiratory disease specialists and a government adviser on its Covid-19 response, said the country had no plans to take any major action in response to the new variant.

"This mutant strain is very new. We'll need to judge how harmful it is, how fast it will spread, whether it will make the disease more severe, and whether a vaccine needs to be developed against it," state-owned Southern Daily quoted him as saying at a conference on Sunday.

"It's too early to draw conclusions... Prevention and control measures for people coming from South Africa need more attention."

Dr Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), also said China would wait and see, while maintaining its existing tough border controls.

"Globally, the pandemic is most serious mainly in Europe, and the prevalent strain this winter and next spring is Delta. Whether Omicron can develop into the dominant strain needs further close observation," Dr Wu said at Caijing magazine's annual forecasts and strategies conference in Beijing.

Dr Zhang Wenhong, the director of the Huashan Hospital's department of infectious diseases and head of the Shanghai panel overseeing the treatment of Covid-19, said on his Weibo account that it would take about two weeks to determine if the variant "poses a threat to the current, initially established and vulnerable population immunity".

"There will be no major impact on China at this time, and China's current rapid response and dynamic clearance strategy is capable of dealing with all types of new coronavirus variants," Dr Zhang said.

Other countries have gone ahead with stricter entry rules.

Israel, which has already recorded one case of the variant, was the first country to close its borders, imposing a blanket ban on all foreign entering the country from midnight on Sunday local time. In a statement to parliament, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the ban, pending government approval, would last for 14 days.

The United States, Canada and Australia have also travel restrictions on travellers from southern Africa. The Philippines suspended flights from eight southern African countries, while Thailand banned travel for those countries and imposed quarantines on recent arrivals. The European Union has also announced plans to suspend flights from southern Africa.

But China already has strict border controls in place as part of its ongoing zero-Covid policy.

"For China, the zero-tolerance policy and prevention of overseas importation are the easiest and most effective ways to control the outbreak," Dr Wu said.

"Without that, in China, there would have been 47.84 million infections and 950,000 deaths based on global pathogenicity and mortality rates.

"If China adopted a policy similar to that of European and American countries, where tourists are allowed to enter with vaccination and 72-hour negative reports, the epidemic would break out all over the country and could not be controlled, and the efforts of the past two years would be wasted." SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST