A week after China began to dismantle its tough “zero infection” controls against COVID-19, the World Health Organization warned of “very difficult” times ahead and state media reported some seriously ill patients in hospitals in China. Beijing, raising fears of a wave of infections.
Last Wednesday, China announced sweeping changes to testing and quarantine rules, aligning itself with a world that has largely reopened after historic protests against mass lockdowns that caused mental strain for millions but kept the coronavirus at bay. control.
The euphoria sparked by those changes has quickly faded amid growing signs that China may pay a price for protecting a population that lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly.
“It is always very difficult for any country to get out of a situation where they have had very, very strict controls,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday, adding that China was facing a ” very hard and difficult moment”.
The WHO typically refrains from commenting on individual countries’ policies, although the agency’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in May that China’s previous regime against COVID-19 was not sustainable.
The official count of COVID-19 cases in China has trended downward in recent weeks, but this has coincided with a decline in testing and is increasingly at odds with the situation on the ground.
Late on Tuesday, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported that there were 50 serious and critical cases in Beijing hospitals, most with underlying health problems. These numbers are small considering China’s 1.4 billion people, but fears are growing that this is just the beginning of the next wave.
China has not reported any COVID-19 related deaths since December 3, before the country began easing restrictions.
“This is the price we pay for being freer,” a 26-year-old surnamed Liu who works in marketing told Reuters on the streets of the capital.
“Now it is essential that we improve our self-protection awareness. I think now the risk depends on the people,” he added, requesting anonymity.
Long lines outside fever clinics — buildings attached to hospitals that test for infectious diseases in mainland China — have been a common sight in Beijing and other cities in recent days.
In Shanghai, China’s most populous city, at least seven schools have announced they will suspend face-to-face teaching due to the COVID-19 cases and take classes online, according to parents and notices seen by Reuters.
Infections are expected to spread across the country in the coming weeks, as some people who have been unable to travel return to their home cities and towns.
State media reported on Wednesday that the daily traffic at the main railway station in Hangzhou’s technology hub had more than doubled to 128,000 as young people headed home.
The mass movement of people will reach its peak on the occasion of the Lunar New Year holidays, which begin on January 22, following restrictions on domestic travel for the previous three years.
The National Health Commission reported that it would launch the second booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine for high-risk groups and the elderly over 60 years of age.
It also said it would stop reporting new asymptomatic COVID-19 infections as many no longer participate in testing.
In the three years since the pandemic broke out in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the country has reported only 5,235 COVID-19-related deaths, which represents a small number of its population and an extremely low number in compared to world levels.
180º TURN
In recent weeks, Chinese health authorities have downplayed the threat of the disease and promoted the idea of self-care, a radical departure from previous messages that the coronavirus had to be eradicated.
However, amid growing concerns over the spread of the virus, Chinese leaders have delayed a key economic policy meeting, which was scheduled to plan necessary stimulus measures for the world’s second-largest economy.
A Bloomberg article published Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter, said the meeting had been delayed and there was no timetable for rescheduling.
Business analysts and economic policy experts said economic leaders were expected to chart new stimulus measures and discuss growth targets at the three-day annual meeting.
Economists estimate that China’s growth has slowed to 3% this year, well below the official target of 5.5%, marking one of the worst results in nearly half a century.
The International Monetary Fund warned in November of a possible revision of Chinese GDP. His boss, Kristalina Georgieva, said that was now “highly likely” following the recent surge in COVID-19, the France-Presse news agency reported on Tuesday.
The Chinese yuan, on track for its worst year since 1994, when China unified official and market exchange rates, was lower against the dollar on Wednesday.