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China says it has seen almost 13,000 covid deaths in hospitals during the week between January 13th and 19th. The number doesn’t include people who have died at home.
More than a billion people in China have been infected so far. President Xi Jinping is particularly concerned about the spread of the virus in rural areas, most of which don’t have any medical resources.
China’s current covid death rate
China's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention says 681 hospitalised patients had died of respiratory failure caused by covid and just under 12,000 had died because of ‘other diseases’ combined with an infection. Some experts in China say the country has already passed the peak covid period for patients in fever clinics and emergency departments, and with critical conditions.
The independent forecaster Airfinity believes daily Covid deaths in China will peak at around 36,000 over the Lunar New Year holiday. They also estimate more than 600,000 people have died from covid since China’s zero-covid policy was abandoned.
Two billion journeys
Tens of millions of people have travelled to celebrate Lunar New Year with their families, something that hasn’t been possible since covid first arrived, and there are real fears about new outbreaks. Chinese New Year represents one of the biggest mass-movements in the world, with a total of around two billion journeys made during the holiday.
One Chinese health expert says there won’t be a second wave
One senior Chinese health official says China won’t see a second covid wave driven by the New Year celebrations simply because almost 80% of the entire population has already been infected. They reckon that in the short term, in the next two to three months, the possibility of a second wave is very small. Others disagree. At the same time the WHO says the covid death figures provided by China are ‘far lower’ than expected.
The ultimate outcome in China, and therefore for the rest of us, depends very much on whether any new variants of concern arise from the millions of new infections.
Hold your breath and hope...
Right now thousands of Chinese holidaymakers are flocking to Thailand’s beaches for the first time since 2019. We’ve been remarkably fortunate, so far, that the virus hasn’t morphed into something a lot more infectious as well as more serious. Let’s hope it stays that way.