In the last 20 days, Covid-19 has reached a new level in China. Hospitals are full as they are getting 250 million cases per month. “Every person I know is getting fever”, citizens are crying.
Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with COVID-19 on a single day this week. The Bloomberg news agency has reported. Citing minutes from an internal meeting of the country’s National Health Commission held on Wednesday. In all, the report which was published on Friday said about 18 percent of the country’s population of 248 million people are likely to have contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December. That stood in dramatic contrast to the official number of 3,049 new infections reported that day.
Hospitals in China appear to be filling up amid concerns about a fresh Covid-19 wave hitting the country, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. Dr Michael Ryan says intensive care units (ICU) are busy despite officials saying numbers are “relatively low”. China figures show no-one died of Covid on Wednesday but there is scepticism about the disease’s real impact.
Consequences of lifting restrictions
In recent days hospitals in Beijing and other cities have been filling up as the latest Covid surge hits China. Since 2020, China has imposed strict health restrictions as part of its zero Covid policy. But, the government ended most of those measures two weeks ago after landmark protests against the strict controls.
After abandoning its “zero Covid” policy following mass protests, China is reportedly seeing a huge surge in coronavirus cases although the official numbers are still low due to limited testing. Models suggest up to one million Chinese people may die over the next few months.
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People in China are also now using rapid antigen tests to detect infections and are under no obligation to report positive results. Officially, China has reported only eight Covid deaths this month a strikingly low figure given the rapid spread of the virus and the relatively low vaccine booster rates among the elderly. How will China boost back against this virus, authorities are quite.