Between January 13 and 19, China reported nearly 13,000 Covid-related deaths in hospitals, after a top health official stated that the vast majority of the population had already been infected, AFP said in a report. The death toll came a week after China said nearly 60,000 people had died with Covid in hospitals in just over a month – but official data has been widely questioned since Beijing abruptly removed anti-virus controls last month.
According to a statement issued by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Saturday, 681 hospitalised patients died of respiratory failure caused by coronavirus infection, and 11,977 died of other diseases associated with an infection during the same time period. The figures do not include any deaths that occurred at home.
So, When Will the Covid Situation in China Get Better?
According to Airfinity, an independent forecasting firm, daily Covid deaths in China will peak at around 36,000 during the Lunar New Year holiday. The firm also estimated that more than 600,000 people have died from the disease since China abandoned the zero-Covid policy in December, AFP said in its report.
China has passed the peak period of Covid patients in fever clinics, emergency rooms and with critical conditions, Guo Yanhong, an official from the National Health Commission told a news conference on Thursday.
Tens of millions of people have travelled across the country in recent days for long-awaited reunions with families to mark Sunday’s Lunar New Year, raising fears of fresh outbreaks. China’s transport authorities have predicted that more than two billion trips will be made this month into February, in one of the world’s largest mass movements of people.
What are Xi’s Concerns?
President Xi Jinping Wednesday expressed concerns over the spread of the virus in rural China, much of which lacks medical resources.
The mass movement of people may cause the virus to spread in certain areas, said Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at China’s Center for Disease Control. But a large-scale COVID-19 surge will be unlikely in the next two or three months because about 80% of the country’s 1.4 billion people have been infected during the recent wave, he wrote on the social media platform Weibo on Saturday.
The center reported 12,660 COVID-19-related deaths between Jan. 13 and 19, including 680 cases of respiratory failure caused by the virus and 11,980 fatalities from other ailments combined with COVID-19. These are on top of 60,000 fatalities reported last week since early December. The statement on Saturday said the deaths occurred in hospitals, which means anyone who died at home would not be included in the tally.
China has counted only deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 death toll, a narrow definition that excludes many deaths that would be attributed to COVID-19 in much of the world.
Rural Rebound?
According to a study conducted by Shanghai medical researchers, a report by CNBC in January had said, the latest Covid wave will pass through major Chinese cities by the end of 2022, while rural areas — as well as more distant provinces in central and western China — will be infected in mid- to late-January.
“The extensive travels during the Spring Festival (January 21, 2023) could dramatically increase the duration and magnitude of the upcoming outbreak," the researchers wrote in a paper published in late December by Frontiers of Medicine, a journal sponsored by China’s Ministry of Education.
According to the researchers, senior citizens in China’s remote areas, particularly those with underlying health conditions, are at a higher risk of severe illness from the highly transmissible omicron variant. The authors were particularly concerned about the rural lack of medicine and intensive care units.
China’s public health system was already overburdened before the pandemic. People from all over the country frequently travelled to crowded hospitals in Beijing’s capital city in order to receive better health care than they could in their hometowns.
With inputs from AFP, Associated Press
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