A million Chinese could die of covid-19 during the next winter months when China ends its “zero cases” policy, according to a model prepared by the consultancy Wigram Capital Advisors.
Chinese authorities are abolishing mass testing, quarantine in designated facilities for positive cases and direct contacts, and the use of contact tracing apps, in an accelerated rollback of highly restrictive measures that have been implemented in China for the past three years. years.
Lifting these restrictions carries the risk, however, of unleashing an unprecedented “wave” of cases this winter, rapidly straining the country’s health system, according to projections produced by Wigram Capital Advisors, a New Zealand-based consultancy and who focuses his research on Asia. The group provided projection models to various governments in the region during the pandemic.
The same projection indicates that China could record 20,000 daily deaths by mid-March. By the end of the same month, the demand for intensive care units should exceed ten times the country’s capacity, which should reach 70,000 daily hospitalizations.
With 1.4 billion people, China is the most populous country in the world. The “zero cases” strategy means that the vast majority of the Chinese population lacks natural immunity. Beijing has also refused to import messenger RNA vaccines, considered more effective than inoculations developed by local pharmaceutical companies Sinopharm and Sinovac.
The vaccination rate among the elderly, the most vulnerable group, also remains low. According to recently published official data, 86% of Chinese people over 60 years of age received the complete vaccination schedule, although the percentage decreases in the group of people over 80 years of age (65.7%). The proportion of adults over the age of 80 who received the booster dose, nationally, is 40%.
The increase in winter cases is expected to be exacerbated by the Lunar New Year holiday. The main celebration of Chinese families, equivalent to Christmas in Western countries, traditionally records the largest internal migration on the planet, with hundreds of millions of Chinese returning to their homeland.
Modeling developed by researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai, released in May, estimates that an uncontrolled outbreak of the Omicron variant in the country could cause almost 1.6 million deaths in the space of three months.
“The current official message in China is that reopening will be free,” writes Rodney Jones, a director at Wigram Capital Advisors. “The risk is that [Pequim] You are underestimating the work and the costs that the rest of the world had to get to the point of living with the virus,” he says.
The Wigram models use data on vaccination and age, the effect of public health measures and R0, the indicator that measures the average number of infections caused by each person. The analysis is also based on the experiences of Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.
For the Chinese population to achieve immunity, allowing the economy to operate freely, 20% of the population, or 290 million people, would have to become infected.
In a more gradual and controlled reopening scenario, this level of immunity would be reached in August next year, according to the Wigram model. This would help limit hospitalizations and deaths by mid-2023.
During the summer wave, the daily peak of deaths would drop to half the number recorded in July 2023, or around 4,000.
“China did nothing to prepare for this step. [O líder chinês] xi [Jinping] seems to be acting on impulse, as a reaction to the protests, rather than as part of a thoughtful political program,” Jones observes.
“It would be easier to have confidence in a reopening strategy if it happened as part of a careful political strategy, and not on impulse, without preparation,” he adds.
Several Chinese cities were the scene of protests, at the end of last month, against the “zero cases” strategy of Covid-19, which provides for the blockade of neighborhoods or entire cities, the constant carrying out of massive tests and the isolation of all cases. positives and their direct contacts in designated facilities, often in degrading conditions.
This policy has also kept the country’s borders virtually closed since March 2020. Beijing has reacted with a reinforced police presence in several cities across the country and arrested an unknown number of protesters, but has also moved forward with guidelines ending the Covid-19 “zero cases” strategy.
Source: Observadora
