from buffalo, hardest hit by the blizzard of the century welcome to bbc news. italy has become the first european country to order covid tests for visitors from china, following growing alarm at the rapid rise in chinese infections. earlier, taiwan said it would introduce a similar scheme. japan and india have already ordered travellers from china to be monitored. the us could follow suit. there s concern travellers could bring new variants of the disease. our diplomatic correspondent paul adams reports. from the world s most populous nation, alarming scenes. china s hospitals are overwhelmed, covid infections soaring. the country s abrupt decision to dismantle much of its strict covid regime apparently yielding terrifying results. wards full of desperately ill people. outside this hospital in chengdu, a queue for emergency services. government officials say the situation is under control. that s not what these pictures suggest. at the dongjiao funeral home, one of the city
mutate. the mutations can eventually result in a new variant. that is what we saw with india and the delta variant. we saw it with omicron too, when we saw big surges. if there is checked spread of the virus, it is spreading so quickly in a large and vulnerable population, you could see the opportunity for a new variant to arise could threaten the rest of the world. infection anywhere, is potentially infection everywhere. what about vaccination rates within china and the types of vaccines they have been using, is that a worry? the chinese have been using vaccines that have been available there in china. they are an older technology. while most of the population has received the initial doses, they have not been well boosted. so you don t have a population that has had natural immunity from infection, or excellent protection from a boosted population that has relatively recent boosters. so, we have a very
first go-around. i had several people that were taken to the hospital that weren t vaccinated from delta. one who almost died. i think that s a great danger here. the shots were still effective against delta, and it appears the shots, it looks like, will be effective against omicron too. again, this is all early. we re still learning as we go. the early sense about this new variant is it is very transmissible, even more so than delta. but the severity of the illness may not be quite as significant, at least not yet. the people who have been affected in south africa were younger people, who respond better anyway. that is a mixed signal. there is a concern that there are more breakthrough cases. it does seem like the two-dose vaccinations, some were boostered too, got the virus but weren t that sick. to eugene s point, there have been record numbers of americans who have gotten shots and boosters in recent days. the white house officials