The wave of Covid-19 is “spreading rapidly” in China, an advising government epidemiologist warned on Sunday, following the government’s decision to abandon its “covid zero” strategy.
Chinese health authorities announced a general relaxation of health restrictions on Wednesday, following angry protests, and also in the hope of reviving the world’s second-largest economy, choked by restrictions.
A wave hard to ride
Beijing’s shops and restaurants were deserted on Sunday as the country awaits an uptick in infections with the end of large-scale, routine PCR testing, the option of home isolation for mild and asymptomatic cases, and a more limited remedy for those confinements.
“Currently, the epidemic in China (…) is spreading rapidly, and under such circumstances, no matter how strong prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely break the chain of transmission” of the virus, said Zhong, one of top government advisers since the start of the pandemic, they warned in an interview with state media published on Sunday.
“The current Omicron sub-variants…are highly contagious…one person can transmit 22 people,” he added. “You can see that hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of people are infected in various major cities.”
The country is facing a surge of cases it is not prepared to handle, with millions of older people still not fully vaccinated and underfunded hospitals lacking the capacity to house large numbers of patients.
The country has one intensive care unit bed for every 10,000 people, Jiao Yahui, director of the department of medical affairs at the national health commission, warned Friday.
He announced that 106,000 doctors and 177,700 nurses would be redirected to intensive care units to attend to the new wave of cases, but without specifying how other hospital sectors would be organized.
“I’m afraid to go out”
Long lines formed outside pharmacies in Beijing on Sunday as residents scrambled to stock up on fever medicine and antigen test kits. Some told AFP they were ordering medicines from pharmacies in nearby towns.
“I’m afraid to go out,” said Liu Cheng, a mother of two who lives in central Beijing, explaining that “many” of her friends with symptoms or tested positive had not reported themselves.
“In my company, the number of people who test negative for Covid is close to zero,” a woman who works in tourism and events in Beijing also told Reuters.
The number of reported cases in China has dropped dramatically following the government’s decision to eliminate mass testing.
Source: BFM TV
