Following a wave of protests that gripped many Chinese cities in late November, the national government in Beijing suddenly eased many of its strict Covid-19 restrictions. The pandemic formula of closures, mass testing, quarantine in state-authorized facilities and electronic contact. Tracking and tracing has largely been lifted.
New evidence suggests that there has been a large accumulation of Covid-19 infections, driven in part by the Omicron BF. 7 subvariant. There also appears to be a sharp rise in Covid-19-related hospitalizations and deaths in the capital, Beijing. However, officially, the government has not reported an unmarried death since December 4. In addition, China’s National Health Commission stopped offering the full count of covid-19 cases this week.
Anecdotal evidence, on the other hand, generates urgency. Normally, Beijing’s busy streets are usually empty. Many department stores are closed. This time, however, it is not the closures that prevent the opening of points of sale, but Covid-19 itself. People stay home because they are sick, leading to shortages in the service sector.
More worryingly, Radio Free Asia reports that funeral homes in and around Beijing are operating 24 hours a day amid rising covid-19 cases, with cremations now subsidized for at least five days. In fact, other people observed long lines of cars at crematoria and cemeteries.
Western media – Financial Times, Reuters and the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant, for example – the acute crisis in hospitals, crematoria and morgues.
China is particularly vulnerable at the moment, given that its elderly, who have the highest probability of suffering from severe COVID-19 illness, are not vaccinated (boosters), have little natural immunity to past infections, and have a limited source of treatments.
The Chinese government is embarking on a large-scale (booster) crusade to combat declining coverage of initial vaccines. In addition, China imports quantities of Paxlovid, Pfizer’s effective antiviral used in Covid-19 patients.
However, even after taking into account the countermeasures being taken, experts expect millions of infections from the existing wave and perhaps more than a million deaths. Furthermore, the models expect the wave to peak in March. Nationally, as the virus spreads from region to region, demand for large care packages is likely to see ten times the capacity through March, with hospitalizations exceeding 70,000. This will push the healthcare formula to its limits, as it has in so many jurisdictions around the world since SARS-CoV-2 first became a pandemic in January 2020.
Some see China’s abandonment of its Zero Covid policy as a pragmatic step to revive economic growth. But, in the short term, this can backfire by exacerbating the problems of hard work shortages and the already existing supply chain. China is the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of customer goods. Disruptions in China’s production sector are very likely to have an effect on the global goods supply chain and the global economy as a whole. Multinational corporations in China are already feeling the effects of the outbreak and are struggling to keep their operations running.
In addition, the big unknown is how, from the perspective of public fitness, the scenario in China is affecting the pandemic outside of China. This can lead to more mutations; indeed, new subvariants of Omicron, and perhaps even entirely new variants, all with potentially larger immune evasion homes and a higher aftershock number, R0. * In turn, this can set the wheels in motion for more cyclical waves around the world.
U. S. public health officials are not allowed to take care of the U. S. U. S. officials say they are “watching” the outbreak in China closely, looking for new variants. for the propagation of (sub)variants.
* R0 refers to the number of secondary infections produced through an index case.