RISING CASES | Medical personnel at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University attend to COVID-19 patients on Dec. 23. (Photo by Agence France-Presse)
Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with COVID-19 on a single day this week, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing estimates from the government’s top health authority.
About 248 million people, which is nearly 18 percent of the population, are likely to have contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December, the report said, citing minutes from an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission held on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, British-based health data firm Airfinity estimated that infections in China were likely to be more than a million a day with deaths at more than 5,000 a day, a “stark contrast” from official data.
China is expecting a peak in COVID-19 infections within a week, a health official said, with authorities predicting extra strain on the country’s health system even as they downplay the disease’s severity and continue to report no new deaths.
In the face of a surging outbreak and widespread protests against its “zero-COVID” regime of lockdowns and testing, China began dismantling it this month, becoming the last major country to move toward living with the virus.
Narrowed criteria
Its containment measures had slowed the economy to its lowest growth rate in nearly half a century, jamming global supply chains and trade. As Chinese workers increasingly fall ill, more disruption is expected in the short term before the economy bounces back later next year.
China reported less than 4,000 new symptomatic local COVID-19 cases nationwide for Dec. 22, and no new COVID-19 deaths for a third consecutive day. Authorities have narrowed the criteria for COVID-19 deaths, prompting criticism from many disease experts.
Zhang Wenhong, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, was quoted in Shanghai government-backed news outlet The Paper on Thursday as saying China “is expected to reach the peak of infections within a week.”
“The peak infection will also increase the rate of severe disease, which will have a certain impact on our entire medical resources,” he said, adding the wave will last another one or two months after that.
“We must be mentally prepared that infection is inevitable.”
Nevertheless, Zhang said he had visited nursing homes around Shanghai, noticing the number of elderly dealing with severe symptoms was low.
Worries over the near-term impact of China’s COVID-19 wave pushed stock markets in China, Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia lower. The yuan also weakened.
Unprepared for shift
A Shanghai hospital has estimated half of the commercial hub’s 25 million people would get infected by the end of next week. Experts say China could face more than a million COVID-19 deaths next year.
China’s abrupt change in policy caught a fragile health system unprepared, with hospitals scrambling for beds and blood, pharmacies for drugs and authorities racing to build clinics.
More than a dozen global health experts, epidemiologists, residents and political analysts interviewed by Reuters identified the failure to vaccinate the elderly and communicate an exit strategy to the public, as well as excessive focus on eliminating the virus, as causes of the strain on China’s medical infrastructure.
A drive to vaccinate the elderly that began three weeks ago has yet to bear fruit. China’s overall vaccination rate is above 90 percent but the rate for adults who have had booster shots drops to 57.9 percent, and to 42.3 percent for people age 80 and older, according to government data.
China spent big on quarantine and testing facilities over the past three years rather than bolstering hospitals and clinics, and training medical staff, these people said.
China’s National Health Commission did not respond to requests for comment on the criticisms.9 locally made jabs
The country has nine domestically developed COVID-19 shots approved for use, all seen as less effective than Western-made vaccines that use the new mRNA technology.
A shipment of 11,500 BioNTech mRNA vaccines for German nationals in China have arrived at the German Embassy in Beijing, an embassy spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.
The embassy hopes the first doses will be given out “as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has received no data from China on new COVID-19 hospitalizations since Beijing lifted its zero-COVID-19 policy. The WHO has said gaps in data might be due to Chinese authorities simply struggling to tally cases.
Amid mounting doubts about Beijing’s statistics, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said all countries, including China, need to share information on their experiences with COVID-19.