It is very likely that many city workers who return home from vacation in expired January will take the disease with them.
China is preparing for the Covid wave to hit its most vulnerable field in early 2023, as the existing wave of infections overwhelms hospitals and extensive care sets in many cities.
The Lunar New Year, China’s most important holiday, falls at the end of January and provides a chance to reunite after years of separation under the harsh internal restrictions and lockdowns of the latest zero covid policy.
But as millions of employees return home, many are expected to take the disease with them, in spaces that have fewer hospitals and clinics, fewer fitness staff, fewer gadgets and medications, and less cash to pay for care.
“In the face of a virus like Omicron, everyone else is equal, but the fact is that when it comes to the virus, urban and rural spaces are not equal,” said one user on Chinese social media platform WeChat. in a small town in the central province of Henan. “Not only are resources and opportunities unequal, but there is also a huge gap in understanding how to manage public health. “
The next wave of infections is expected to hit rural areas by late winter, predicts British fitness analytics company Airfinity, and maybe even more people than recent city users.
The death toll may be compounded by the government’s abrupt substitution in Covid propaganda messages. The virus had been touted as a risk that had been avoided at almost any cost, but now Chinese citizens are being told it’s a little worse than a cold. .
“My hometown has quietly replaced the way they communicate when they get sick,” said the user who posted on WeChat from Henan. “‘All family circles caught a cold,’ so there’s nothing to worry about. “
This stance means there is little official promotion of fundamental measures, such as social distancing, which can only slow the spread of the disease and, in all likelihood, buy time for defeated hospitals.
Jeremy Wallace, professor of government at Cornell University, said: “I’m very surprised that the message turns out to be a denial of the intensity of the suffering of this wave and, from what I’ve seen, no communication about flattening the curve by cutting the strain on their overburdened health systems. As such, I would expect staggering death totals, as predicted through models examining the holiday of Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong, on the order of a million.
In some urban areas, covid has spread so that infections may peak soon, analysts say, although it is difficult to hint at the evolution of the disease because when China reduced controls on the disease, it also reduced the publication of covid statistics.
China was once proud of its Covid statistics. Then, as deaths and infections rose, the National Health Commission (NHC) said it would no longer publish a daily number of deaths.
On Friday, despite widely circulated images and stories of hospitals unable to cope with the influx of patients, the NHC said there was one death from covid and 5,500 new cases in the past 24 hours, AFP reported.
By contrast, Airfinity estimates that around 9000 people die per day from covid in China. Next month, that could reach 25,000 per day, and the company predicts a number of deaths through April of up to 1. 7 million more people.
An NHC spokesman, Jiao Yahui, admitted this week that China excludes from tolls many deaths that would be counted in countries as covid deaths, AFP reported.
In other parts of the world, any death within 28 days of a positive nucleic acid test is counted. Beijing has to count only those who die from respiratory failure caused by the virus.
“China has pledged to assemble clinical criteria to judge covid-19 deaths from start to finish, which are in line with foreign standards,” Jiao said.
While Chinese propaganda systems claim that the government’s pivot on the pandemic, from serious controls to the spread of the disease, has been perfectly managed, social media is filled with the grim realities of life in the midst of a pandemic.
The Chinese government is quick to quell dissent and complaints online, yet an unexpected number of posts discussing the truth of Covid in China today put it online and remain in its position for some time, said Charlie Smith, co-founder of Greatfire. org, a censor. Surveillance site.
“Most of these messages are because censorship limits are temporarily replaced and censors can’t stay awake. But it also makes sense that the genuine humans behind censorship can see for themselves that existing Covid handling is everywhere,” he said. They must ask themselves how they could possibly censor covid-related messages when everyone has covid. “