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Resurgence of COVID-19 in China and impact on the world

China May Announce 10 New Steps To Ease Covid Curbs On Wednesday: Report

Hong Kong: China may announce 10 new COVID-19 easing measures as early as Wednesday, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, supplementing 20 unveiled in November that set off a wave of COVID-easing steps nationwide.

Three years of zero-tolerance measures, from shuttered borders to frequent lockdowns, have battered China's economy, fuelling last month the mainland's biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.

Management of the disease may be downgraded as soon as January, to the less strict Category B from the current top-level Category A of infectious disease, the sources said on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The National Health Commission did not immediately respond to a Reuters fax message seeking comment.

Last week, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said China was facing "a new situation" as pathogenicity of the Omicron virus weakened, becoming the first high-ranking official to publicly acknowledge that the new variant's disease-causing ability had diminished.

Many major cities have since started to lift wide lockdowns, reduce regular PCR testing, and end checks for negative tests in public spaces, such as subway stations and parks.

The national health authority had earlier announced a score of new measures on November 11, in an effort to improve COVID management and strike a better balance between epidemic control and shoring up the economy.

China will allow home quarantine for some of those testing positive, among the supplementary measures set to be announced, two sources told Reuters last week.

That would be a key change in strategy from earlier this year, when entire communities were locked down, sometimes for weeks, after just one positive case.

Last month, new, easier quarantine rules required just the lockdown of affected buildings.

Since January 2020, China has classified COVID-19 as a Category B infectious disease but managed it under Category A protocols, giving local authorities the power to quarantine patients and their close contacts and lock down regions.

Category A covers diseases such as bubonic plague and cholera, while Category B groups SARS, AIDS, and anthrax, with diseases such as influenza, leprosy, and mumps placed in Category C.

But more than 95% of China's cases are asymptomatic and mild, with few deaths. In such circumstances, sticking to the Category A strategy is not in line with science, state media outlet Yicai said on Sunday, citing an unidentified expert.

COVID-19 could be downgraded to Category B management or even Category C, the expert told Yicai.

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From Underground Restaurants To Secret Bars: Beijing Dodges Covid Curbs

Beijing: Dining in underground restaurants, drinking in secretive bars spread by word-of-mouth, and hiding their Covid symptoms -- some Beijing residents are defying strict curbs as the government tentatively relaxes pandemic control measures.

"It was quite secretive, you couldn't see the lights on the second floor from the outside," said one resident who visited a clandestine hotpot restaurant.

She came across the purveyor of simmering stew on Xiaohongshu -- China's equivalent of Instagram -- while searching for places to dine indoors in Beijing, saying it was "full" of people.

"I was very happy to eat out, but at the same time I felt like I had to fight an underground battle," she said, asking to stay anonymous.

China is facing an inflection point in its virus response, having stuck to heavy-handed restrictions that were successful in containing initial outbreaks but which have stoked widespread public resentment.

In the wake of the country's largest protests in decades, numerous cities including Beijing have begun relaxing testing requirements as state media downplays the risks of the virus.

That relaxation has emboldened some residents to skirt the rules, with news of eateries and cafes offering dine-in services -- prohibited in much of the capital -- circulating on social media and drawing hundreds of likes.

One expat who asked not to be named told AFP he recently enjoyed a mutton stew and skewers at another underground restaurant.

"The staff weren't going to let me in and said they were only doing takeout," he said.

"But when I said friends were already upstairs, they winked and told me to scan my QR code."

Another Beijing expat told AFP he watched a World Cup match at a shuttered nightclub that organises clandestine screenings where guests are only invited through word-of-mouth.

After a labyrinthine journey through a neighbouring hotel and car park to reach the nightclub, locked from the outside, he found unmasked guests discreetly watching the game inside.

"It was so surreal to jump through all of these hoops," he said.

And one Beijing food blogger who recently posted about visiting a secretly open bar said they were fed up with the situation.

"I really can't stand it anymore, I hope they reopen as soon as possible," the blogger, surnamed Sui, told AFP.

Two of the residents also believe they caught Covid in recent days, having suffered from fever and a cough, but refused to take a PCR test that would result in them getting locked down or, even worse, taken to central quarantine.

Some communities in downtown Chaoyang district began quietly allowing Covid-positive residents to quarantine at home last week, in a major departure from China's previous Covid playbook.

"It's better to wait it out and recover at home" without getting contact traced through PCR testing or entering public spaces, said one expat, admitting it "felt a little rebellious."

"I really want to get Covid to get it over with, have felt so sick in the past two days," one Beijinger told AFP, saying she plans to stay at home and wait out her symptoms.

"I know Covid positive people can quarantine at home now, I don't want the government to know if I get Covid or not."

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"If You Touch Us...": Students Protest Campus Lockdown In China Over Covid

Beijing: Students protested against a lockdown at a university in eastern China, highlighting continued anger as huge numbers of people across the country still face restrictions despite the government easing its zero-Covid policy.

Some Chinese cities have begun tentatively rolling back mass testing and curbs on movement following nationwide anti-lockdown demonstrations last week.

But analysts at Japanese firm Nomura on Monday calculated that 53 cities -- home to nearly a third of China's population -- still had some restrictions in place.

China's vast security apparatus has moved swiftly to smother the rallies, deploying a heavy police presence while boosting online censorship and surveillance.

Videos published on social media Tuesday and geolocated by AFP show a crowd of students at Nanjing Tech University on Monday night shouting demands to leave the campus.

"Your power is given to you by students, not by yourselves," one person can be heard shouting in the footage. "Serve the students!"

A third-year student who asked to remain anonymous confirmed the protest took place, a day after the school announced it would seal off the campus for five days because of just one Covid case.

Chinese universities have restricted movement for months, with many requiring students to apply for permission to leave the campus and banning visitors.

The Nanjing Tech student told AFP her peers were unhappy about poor communication from the university and worried they would be blocked from travelling home for the winter holidays.

In the footage, the crowd can be seen arguing with university representatives and shouting for school leaders to step down.

"If you touch us you will become the second Foxconn!" one protester yells in reference to violent demonstrations last month in central China at a factory run by the Taiwanese tech giant that supplies Apple.

Other clips showed a police car arriving on the scene and university officials promising students they would compile their complaints in a file.

The Nanjing protest comes days after people took to the streets in multiple Chinese cities urging an end to the zero-Covid policy, with some even calling for Chinese President Xi Jinping to step down.

Hundreds gathered at Beijing's elite Tsinghua and Peking universities at the end of last month as well as on campuses in the cities of Xi'an, Guangzhou and Wuhan.

- Tentative easing -

Authorities have cracked down on subsequent efforts to protest while appearing to answer some demands by easing a number of restrictions.

On Tuesday Beijing said offices and commercial buildings including supermarkets would no longer require visitors to show proof of a negative test.

Major businesses and organisers of large-scale events will be allowed to devise their own testing requirements, authorities said.

Xie Shangguang, a 22-year-old student in Beijing, welcomed the changes as "good news" and told AFP he felt the capital was "coming back to life".

"I have the impression that it will gradually ease up," he said. "You can't let everything go at once, or block everything at once, you have to proceed step by step."

Another Beijing resident, 28-year-old Wu Siqi, also said the loosening should be incremental.

"You can't just suddenly tell people they don't need to do anything," she said.

A host of other cities including Shanghai have dialled down mass testing mandates in recent days.

In the southern city of Guangzhou, officials began telling people to stay home if they have symptoms -- a sharp about-turn from the previous approach of dragging all positive cases to central quarantine facilities.

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Beijing Drops Covid Negative Report Requirement After Rare Protests

Beijing:

China's capital Beijing dropped the need for people to show negative COVID tests to enter airport, supermarkets and offices on Tuesday, the latest in an easing of curbs across the country following last month's historic protests.

"Beijing readies itself for life again" read a headline in the government-owned China Daily newspaper, adding that people were "gradually embracing" the slow return to normality.

Further loosening beckons after a string of demonstrations last month that marked the biggest show of public discontent in mainland China since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.

"This might be the first step towards reopening from this pandemic," Beijing resident Hu Dongxu, 27, told Reuters as he swiped his travel card to enter a train station in the capital, which has also dropped the need for tests to ride the subway.

The shift comes as top officials softened their tone on the severity of the virus, bringing China closer to what other countries have been saying for more than a year as they dropped restrictions and opted to live with the virus.

China may announce 10 new nationwide easing measures as early as Wednesday, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, as cities across the country have been lifting localised lockdowns.

That has sparked optimism among investors for a broader reopening of the world's second biggest economy that could boost global growth.

But despite reassurances from authorities, commuter traffic in major cities such as Beijing and Chongqing remains at a fraction of previous levels.

Some people remain wary of catching the virus, especially the elderly, many of whom remain unvaccinated, while there is also concern about the strain the loosening could put on China's fragile health system.

NEXT PHASE

China has reported 5,235 COVID-related deaths so far as of Monday, but some experts have warned that toll could rise above 1 million if the exit is too hasty.

Analysts at Nomura estimate that areas now under lockdown equate to around to be 19.3% of China's total GDP, down from 25.1% last Monday.

This marks the first decline in Nomura's closely-watched China COVID lockdown index since the start of October, nearly two months ago.

Meanwhile, officials continue to downplay the dangers posed by the virus.

Tong Zhaohui, director of the Beijing Institute of Respiratory Diseases, said on Monday that the latest Omicron variant of the disease had caused fewer cases of severe illness than the 2009 global influenza outbreak, according to Chinese state television.

China's management of the disease may be downgraded as soon as January, to the less strict Category B from the current top-level Category A of infectious disease, Reuters reported exclusively on Monday.

"The most difficult period has passed," the official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary published late on Monday, citing the weakening pathogenicity of the virus and efforts to vaccinate 90% of the population.

Analysts now predict China may re-open the economy and drop border controls sooner than expected next year, with some seeing it fully open in spring.

But more than half of Chinese say they will put off travel abroad, for periods from several months to more than a year, even if borders re-opened tomorrow, a study showed on Tuesday

Fear of infection with the disease was the top concern of those saying they would postpone travel in a survey of 4,000 consumers in China by consultancy Oliver Wyman.

NDTV
 
China Relaxes Zero-Covid Curbs: Here's What Will Change

China rolled back its tough Covid rules on Wednesday, after the restrictions sparked popular unrest and hammered the world's second-largest economy.
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Here are some of the major changes announced by Beijing's National Health Commission:

- Home quarantine -

People infected with Covid but with mild or no symptoms can now isolate at home rather than in state-managed facilities.

This is a reversal of earlier rules, where all infected patients and their close contacts were sent to hospitals or hastily-built isolation centres.

Occupants have complained about grim conditions in many of these facilities -- from bad food to a lack of running water.

Residents can now also buy fever and cold medicines without restrictions, where previously they were forced into fever clinics where they were screened for Covid.

- Shorter lockdowns -

Snap lockdowns must be applied to more precisely identified areas, including specific buildings, units and floors, instead of shutting down entire neighbourhoods or imposing city-wide lockdowns, the new rules say.

They must also be lifted if no new cases are found for five consecutive days.

The move represents a marked departure from previous rules, which saw millions locked down for months.

Schools must remain open if there is no wider campus outbreak.

The new guidelines also ban the blocking of fire exits and doors by officials, after 10 people perished in a blaze in a sealed building in northwest China's Urumqi, sparking nationwide protests.

Virus controls must also not prevent people from accessing emergency medical treatment, it added, after a string of deaths tied to hospitals turning down patients without negative Covid tests.

- No more mass testing -

Officials have also scrapped the need for frequent mass testing, saying only "employees in high-risk positions" such as healthcare workers and delivery staff -- as well as those in "high-risk" areas -- will need to take regular tests.

But companies are still permitted to ask workers to produce test results -- meaning testing is far from gone from daily life in China.

Most cities previously also required residents to have a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours to ride public transport or even enter a public park -- rules that no longer apply.

Residents are now also allowed to travel between provinces without a 48-hour test result and will not be asked to test again at their destination.

That shift is expected to boost China's struggling domestic travel industry, hit hard since the onset of the pandemic in late 2019.

- Scrapping 'health codes' -

The Chinese public is no longer required to show a green health code on their phone to enter public buildings and spaces, except for "nursing homes, medical institutions, kindergartens, middle and high schools."

The widespread use of health codes tracking citizens' whereabouts has raised concerns over privacy, official abuse and data theft.

Five officials in central China's Zhengzhou city were punished in June for deliberately turning thousands of citizens' health codes red to stop them from protesting against a banking scandal.

Despite the changes, China's borders remain largely closed, with inbound travellers still required to quarantine for a week.

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As China Relaxes 'Zero-Covid' Curbs, Fears Of Virus Grow

As many Chinese embraced new freedoms on Thursday after the country dropped key parts of its tough zero-COVID regime, there was mounting concern that a virus, which had largely been kept in check, could soon run wild.

Three years into the pandemic, many in China had been itching for Beijing to start to align its rigid virus prevention measures with the rest of the world, which has largely opened up in an effort to live with the disease.

Those frustrations boiled over into widespread protests last month, the biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.

Without saying it was a response to those protests, some cities and regions began relaxing COVID controls, in moves that heralded a nationwide loosening of the rules unveiled by the National Health Commission on Wednesday.

The NHC said infected people with mild symptoms can now quarantine at home and it dropped the need for testing and health status checks on mobile apps for a variety of activities including travelling around the country.

Domestic ticket sales for tourist and leisure spots have soared, according to state press, while some people took to social media to reveal they had tested positive for the virus - something that had previously carried heavy stigma in China.

Others expressed caution.

"I know COVID is not so 'horrifying' now, but it is still contagious and will hurt," said one post on the Weibo platform. "The fear brought to our heart cannot be easily dissipated."

"Too many positives!" said another Weibo user.

China reported 21,439 new local COVID-19 infections on Dec. 7, down slightly from the previous day and below a peak of 40,052 cases on Nov. 27. Cases have been trending lower recently as authorities across the country dropped testing requirements.

Various multi-million dollar projects to build testing laboratories across the country, from Shandong province in the east to Sichuan in the southwest, have been scrapped as China has cut down the need for testing, reported Shanghai government-backed news outlet The Paper.

China and Hong Kong stocks lifted Asian equity markets on Thursday, as these still cautious steps towards reopening were seen giving the world's second largest economy a chance to regather momentum.

China's yuan, which has also recovered some ground against the dollar in recent weeks, was little changed on Thursday.

ILL-PREPARED

China's most populous city Shanghai, which endured one of the country's longest and harshest lockdowns, on Thursday dropped the need for COVID tests to enter restaurants or entertainment venues.

There has been no mention of China's "zero-COVID" policy in recent announcements, raising suspicions that the term is becoming defunct as the government gradually moves the country toward a state of living with the virus.

Top officials have also been softening their tone on the dangers posed by the virus.

But, while adopting the new more relaxed controls, some cities urged residents to remain vigilant.

"The general public should maintain a good awareness of personal protection, and be the first responsible person for their own health," Zhengzhou, the central city home to the world's largest iPhone factory, said in a message to residents.

It urged residents to wear masks, maintain social distancing, seek medical attention for fever and other COVID symptoms and, especially for the elderly, to get vaccinated.

Some analysts and medical experts say China is ill-prepared for a major surge in infections, partly due to low vaccination rates among vulnerable, older people and its fragile healthcare system.

"It (China) may have to pay for its procrastination on embracing a 'living with COVID' approach," Nomura analysts said in a note on Thursday.

Infection rates in China are only around 0.13%, "far from the level needed for herd immunity", Nomura said.

Feng Zijian, a former official in China's Center for Disease Control, told the China Youth Daily that up to 60% of China's population could be infected in the first large-scale wave before stabilising.

"Ultimately, around 80%-90% of people will be infected," he said.

The country will probably face a large-scale outbreak in the next one to two months, state-owned magazine China Newsweek reported on Thursday citing health experts.

China's current tally of 5,235 COVID-related deaths is a tiny fraction of its population of 1.4 billion, and extremely low by global standards. Some experts have warned that toll could rise above 1.5 million if the exit is too hasty.

But, even with the dangers, for many there is an acceptance that life must go on.

"It's impossible to kill this virus completely, maybe just live with it and hope it will evolve into flu," said Yan, a 22-year-old unemployed Beijing resident, who said he hoped a further opening up of China's economy would help him find work.

NDTV
 
Caution And Resentment In China's Wuhan Despite Ease In Covid Curbs

In the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak nearly three years ago and where thousands died, residents cautiously greeted a relaxation of lockdown measures by authorities this week.

In the city center, few people were in shops and restaurants and the subway was only partially filled as many residents remained wary of a possible new flare-up of infections.

The teeming metropolis bore the brunt of the pandemic in its early stages in early 2020, when authorities ordered the entire city of 11 million to be sealed off in a military-style lockdown for more than two months - a traumatic chapter that has not been forgotten by some.

"We know the country is reopening but we ourselves haven't let down our guard," said one Wuhan cornershop owner. "We're taking precautions, protecting ourselves because it (the virus) is spreading quickly."

Outside a fever clinic attached to Wuhan's central hospital where Li Wenliang, a whistleblower doctor, had worked and first raised awareness of the mysterious virus before succumbing to it himself, a queue of more than 100 people sought treatment, marshalled by workers in white hazmat suits.

Two Wuhan pharmacies visited by Reuters had sold out of fever medication a day ago, while customers asked for vitamin C or cough medicine in vain with stocks depleted.

"This has never happened before, not even at the start of the outbreak in 2020," said one Wuhan pharmacist surnamed Liu.

Health authorities in Wuhan reported 229 new COVID cases on Thursday, while health authorities in Beijing reported more than 16,000 cases nationwide on the same day.

Beijing has also been quiet amid a reluctance of some businesses to drop COVID curbs. Enduring anxieties about the coronavirus are likely to hamper a speedy return to health for the world's second-largest economy. [L8N32Z09X]

"For Wuhaners, there's always this tendency to resort to panic buying, whether it is medicine, or food. It's fair to say that's because we were traumatised from the first wave, and that experience stays with us," said Li, a 31-year old manager who works for a real estate company in Wuhan.

"LIKE A NIGHTMARE"

Over the past year, Wuhan, which straddles the Yangtze River in central China, has been in intermittent, partial lockdown as some regional logistic centres such as Dongxi Hu District reported cases throughout the year.

By November, as frustration towards the zero-COVID policies mounted, some Wuhan residents like Sam Yuen, a teacher, joined protests demanding an end to the lockdowns, alongside thousands of others in cities across China.

"It was a nightmare ... it felt like we were being treated like animals," Yuen told Reuters.

He described how residential compounds across the city had been sealed off with metal sheets by the autumn in a throwback to the days of the first outbreak.

"Before, people always said youths wouldn't resist and fight for their rights, but resisting like this was good. It showed wisdow and courage ... When I saw people standing there I was very moved. It was one of the best moments of my life. In 30 years I've not felt such collective passion such as this."

For Wang Wenjun, who lost an uncle during the lockdown in 2020, the scars have not yet healed.

"All throughout this period I have felt numb. I don't feel I received any help at all," she told Reuters

When people began falling ill with a mysterious form of pneumonia in December 2019, with a cluster of cases linked to the Huanan seafood market, authorities were criticised for being slow to respond and trying to cover up news of the infections.

The downtown market remained boarded up during a visit by a Reuters correspondent on Friday.

Cases surged in Wuhan, with authorities later scrambling to build make-shift hospitals in gymnasiums, sports stadiums and convention centers amid the city-wide lockdown.

City authorities put the official toll at 3,869 in April 2020. But some felt the actual figures were much higher amid reports of people queing to collect the ashes of relatives and urns stacking up in funeral homes.

"Under their (government) control, their leadership, how can we have a good life?" Wang said.

Others, however, welcomed the chance for a fresh start.

"I was excited to hear the news," said Chen, 32, a university lecturer. "We can finally, finally move on."

NDTV
 
Economists hail end to zero Covid in China but huge human toll is feared
Low rate of vaccination of elderly and a lack of natural immunity mean country may be in for a bumpy ride

Beijing’s abrupt dismantling of zero-Covid controls has been welcomed by economists, even as the country braces itself for the human impact of letting the disease spread through a vulnerable population.

The leadership’s abrupt U-turn on how it handles the pandemic appears to have been triggered by protests against controls that began last month, a nationwide show of discontent on a scale China had not seen in decades.

But that unrest came after growing concern about the toll that isolation and regular harsh lockdowns were having on the country’s economy.

China has been an engine for regional growth since last century. However this year it is forecast to lag behind its neighbours for the first time since 1990, with disastrous implications for its people.

Nearly one in five young people in cities are unemployed. Small and medium businesses have been particularly badly hit by the uncertainty, and the impact of unpredictable and often long-lasting shutdowns of entire cities.

But almost no one has been exempt. The founder of Foxconn, a key Apple supplier, had warned Beijing that controls threatened China’s place in the global supply chain, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The private letter was sent last month, when disgruntled workers protested at the company’s factories, and was ammunition for health officials and advisers who wanted to open the country to the world again.

Other countries which had pursued zero-Covid policies at the start of the pandemic, from Australia to South Korea, have cautiously opened up again since vaccines and anti-viral treatments became more widely available.

The IMF’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, welcomed the “decisive” steps by Chinese authorities in “recalibrating Covid policies”, and said they could boost the regional international economy.

“This can be very good for the Chinese people and economy, and also good for Asia and the world economy,” she said after a summit in China’s eastern Huangshan city. Premier Li Keqiang, who hosted the discussions, had conspicuously abandoned masks and social distancing.

On social media, public information videos showed smiling men and women taking off the face coverings that have been compulsory for years.

It was a whiplash-inducing reversal from years of messaging that the only way to stay safe was to avoid Covid, through extreme lockdown measures if necessary. For years, an increasingly fierce system of controls held increasingly infectious strains of disease at bay. Medical experts say that was a wasted window of opportunity to protect the population and prepare the healthcare system for a wave of sick patients.

Georgieva also called for more vaccination and a quick expansion of options for medical treatment, to prepare for the wave of infections that will inevitably follow opening up.

“This [end to zero-Covid] can create a better impetus for reviving growth in China, particularly if combined with more broad-based vaccinations, provision of anti-viral treatment, and ramping up healthcare capacity.”

The big challenge facing the leadership now is whether it can limit case numbers and deaths. China is an ageing country, with vaccination and booster rates lagging far behind what is needed to limit severe illness.

Only 40% of people over 80, who are particularly vulnerable, have received their booster shots. And almost all of them will have got the domestically developed vaccine, which is less effective and long-lasting than Western alternatives.

China has been seeking the technology to produce mRNA vaccines, but has declined to buy or import them. Adding to the risks from a fast-spreading wave of cases, there is almost no natural immunity, because most people have never been exposed to Covid.

Between 1.3 and 2.1 million lives could be at risk, a study by health analytics company Airfinity found. It based models on the impact of an outbreak earlier this year in Hong Kong, which also has an elderly population and low vaccination take-up.

Allowing the disease to spread at the start of winter in the northern hemisphere, when other respiratory diseases are circulating and people are crammed indoors, adds to the risks.

Those factors could mean a bumpy road ahead for China. If health services are overwhelmed, it may have to resort to the “rollercoaster” of temporary lockdowns that most western countries went through until they had boosted vaccination rates.

The Guardian
 
Beijing's Covid Gloom Deepens As China Relaxes Curbs After Protests

Beijing's COVID-19 gloom deepened on Sunday with many shops and other businesses closed, and an expert warned of many thousands of new coronavirus cases as anger over China's previous COVID policies gave way to worry about coping with infection.

China dropped most of its strict COVID curbs on Wednesday after unprecedented protests against them last month, but cities that were already battling with their most severe outbreaks, like Beijing, saw a sharp decrease in economic activity after rules such as regular testing were scrapped.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many businesses have been forced to close as infected workers quarantine at home while many other people are deciding not to go out because of the higher risk of infection.

Zhong Nanshan, a prominent Chinese epidemiologist, told state media that the Omicron strain of the virus prevalent in China was highly transmissible and one infected person could spread it to as many as 18 others.

"We can see that hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of people are infected in several major cities," Zhong said.

With regular COVID testing of Beijing residents scrapped and reserved only for groups such as health workers, official tallies for new cases have plunged.

Health authorities reported 1,661 new infections for Beijing Saturday, down 42% from 3,974 on Dec. 6, a day before national policies were dramatically relaxed.

But evidence suggests there are many more cases in the city of nearly 22 million people where everyone seems to know someone who has caught COVID.

"In my company, the number of people who are COVID-negative is close to zero," said one woman who works for a tourism and events firm in Beijing who asked to be identified as just Nancy.

"We realise this can't be avoided - everyone will just have to work from home," she said.

HIGHER RISK

Sunday is a normal business day for shops in Beijing and it is usually bustling, particularly in spots like the historic Shichahai neighbourhood packed with boutiques and cafes.

But few people were out and about on Sunday and malls in Chaoyang, Beijing's most populous district, were practically deserted with many salons, restaurants and retailers shut.

Economists widely expect China's road to economic health to be uneven as shocks such as labour crunches due to workers calling in sick delay a full-fledged recovery for some time yet.

"The transition out of zero-COVID will eventually allow consumer spending patterns to return to normal, but a higher risk of infection will keep in-person spending depressed for months after re-opening," Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.

China's economy may grow 1.6% in the first quarter of 2023 from a year earlier, and 4.9% in the second, according to Capital Economics.

Epidemiologist Zhong also said it would be some months before a return to normal.

"My opinion is in the first half of next year, after March," he said.

While China has removed most of its domestic COVID curbs, its international borders are still largely closed to foreigners, including tourists.

Inbound travellers are subjected to five days of quarantine at centralised government facilities and three additional days of self-monitoring at home.

But there are even hints that that rule could change.

Staff at the main international airport in Chengdu city, asked if quarantine rules were being eased, said that as of Saturday whether or not one needed to do the three days of home quarantine would depend on a person's neighbourhood authorities.

NDTV
 
China Businesses Face Fresh Worries As Covid Fears Keep People At Home

Infections are delivering a fresh kick in the teeth for many small businesses in China's central city of Wuhan, despite the easing of most stringent curbs last week.
With the sick and those fearing infection keeping to their homes, hopes of brighter prospects after the end of lockdowns are evaporating, at least for now, with the government showing few signs of stepping in to help.

"I simply can't go on," said Zhu Chongping, 60, as he looked around his empty restaurant, which dishes up regional cuisine in the city of more than 13 million where the COVID-19 pandemic began three years ago.

"I'm losing money every day, a thousand yuan a day."

The challenge for small businessmen like Zhu spotlights how Beijing's shift away from tough COVID policies, with the promise of driving an economic recovery next year, is likely instead to depress growth over the next few months as infections surge.

Business on what would normally be a buzzing food street, where most restaurants were shut or empty last Saturday, is the worst it has been since Zhu first opened his doors to customers 30 years ago, he added, looking forlorn.

The outlook after "zero-COVID" eased, following unprecedented protests, is even bleaker than during the city's 76-day lockdown in 2020, he said, because this year his landlord is not offering a discount on his rent.

Rent subsidies and consumer vouchers had been among the measures local authorities rolled out to support business at that time, but there are few such signs this year.

"This street is considered a top location in Wuhan," Zhu added. "Now there is no one about. You can imagine that other locations are even worse."

The only queue within several hundred metres was outside a pharmacy, where people waited to stock up on medicines to treat the symptoms of COVID.

"My business is struggling to stay afloat," said the owner of a bag store on nearby Hanzheng Street, home to one of China's biggest wholesale clothing markets and the site of a large anti-lockdown protest last month.

"We have to see what happens next year ... ," added the 48-year-old, surnamed Liang. "We have to see what the footfall will be like. If things are still the same next year, vendors will have to leave."
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Many other shopkeepers simply told Reuters they had zero or "no business".

The scarcity of customers is having a knock-on effect on other industries, further hurting growth as China grapples with an economic downturn this year.

"There are not many new stores opening and not many new businesses starting, so our business cannot get going and we are facing layoffs," said Huang, the owner of an advertising business who asked to be identified only by his surname.

People just do not have much money anymore, said a Wuhan taxi driver, surnamed Sun, adding that subsidies had made the 2020 lockdown more manageable than this year's measures.

"With all these lockdowns I've earned nothing for weeks," he said. "Now, it's a tiny bit better, but I can only make enough to pay back the company my monthly taxi rental fee."

Surveys have shown factory activity shrank in November amid widespread COVID curbs, while exports and imports fell at their steepest pace in at least 2-1/2 years, piling more pressure on the slowing economy.

Zhiwu Chen, a finance professor at the University of Hong Kong, said he felt authorities hoped the infections would usher in sufficient immunity within three or four months, allowing small and medium -sized businesses to rebound.

"Of course in the process the country will suffer from the shock therapy," he added.

"I hope they will be able to sustain the shock."

NDTV
 
China's Big Move In Easing Zero-Tolerance Covid Strategy

China said Monday it would retire an app used to track Covid-19 contacts, a milestone in the country's rapid turn away from its zero-tolerance coronavirus strategy.

The state-run "Communications Itinerary Card", which tracks whether someone has been to a high-risk area based on their phone signal, will go offline at 12 am Tuesday, according to an official WeChat post, after more than two years in operation.

The "Itinerary Card" was a central part of China's zero-Covid policy, with millions of people required to key in their phone numbers to produce its signature green arrow in order to travel between provinces or enter events.

The decision comes just days after China announced an end to large-scale lockdowns, mandatory quarantine in central facilities, and a broad relaxation of testing measures, effectively throwing in the towel on its zero-Covid strategy.

Official reported cases in the country have dropped sharply from all-time highs last month, but top Chinese health expert Zhong Nanshan warned in state media Sunday that the prevailing Omicron variant was "spreading rapidly" through the country.

First rolled out in 2020 with a four-tier system that assigned different colours depending on users' predicted level of Covid exposure, the Itinerary Card was tweaked multiple times before a final change this year shortened the tracking period from 14 to seven days.

It is only one of a panoply of tracking apps that have governed everyday life in China throughout the pandemic, with most people using local "health codes" run by their city or province to enter shops and offices.

But social media users nevertheless hailed the Itinerary Card's retirement, noting the symbolism of Beijing shutting down its main tracking app.

Many posted screenshots of their "last" logins.

"Bye bye, this announces the end of an era, and also welcomes a brand new one," one person wrote on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.

"Goodbye itinerary card, concerts here I come," wrote another.

Others asked what would become of the mountains of data collected by the app.

"The Itinerary Card and other similar products mean vast amounts of personal information and private data," wrote one Weibo user.

"I hope there will be mechanisms and measures to log out and delete this."

NDTV
 
Hong Kong Lifts Curbs On Travellers, Shuts Down Covid App

Arrivals in Hong Kong from Wednesday will no longer receive an 'amber' code barring them from some venues, Chief Executive John Lee said, while dropping use of a government-mandated COVID-19 mobile application.

The news of a further loosening of COVID-19 curbs in the global financial hub, which has trailed most of the world in easing them, is set to boost resumption of travel and business, as the code had limited access to bars and restaurants.

The government's move to scrap its mobility-tracking app governing access to restaurants and venues such as gyms, clubs and salons, comes after mainland China dropped the requirement.

Business groups, diplomats and many residents had slammed Hong Kong's COVID-19 rules, saying they threatened its competitiveness and standing as an international financial centre.

The rules have weighed on Hong Kong's economy since early 2020, adding to an exodus of businesses both expatriates and local families kickstarted by Beijing's efforts to exert control and limit freedoms.

NDTV
 
China Sees Rise In Covid Cases As Its Strict Policy Eases

Covid cases are surging in the Chinese capital, officials said Monday, as the country navigates a rapid turn away from its zero-tolerance coronavirus strategy.

Just a few days after China began loosening restrictions, Beijing authorities said more than 22,000 patients had visited hospitals across the city in the previous day -- 16 times the number a week ago.

"The current trend of the rapid spread of the epidemic in Beijing still exists," said city health commission spokesman Li Ang at a briefing Monday.

"The number of fever clinic visits and flu-like cases increased significantly, and the number of... emergency calls increased sharply."

China reported 8,626 domestic infections Monday but with testing no longer mandatory for much of the population the number is believed to be a lot higher.

As the country steers a tricky path out of its zero-Covid policy towards living with the virus, many with symptoms have opted to self-medicate at home.

Cold and fever medicines have sold out in virtually all pharmacies across Beijing, and rapid antigen tests are dwindling as people stock up in anticipation of a virus surge that threatens the lives of millions of unvaccinated elderly.

Social media users reported a surge of infections in smaller cities including Baoding in Hebei province and Dazhou in Sichuan, with hospitals inundated and residents unable to buy medicines.

AFP was not immediately able to verify the claims.

"It's really serious, the supply of medicine is not enough and it's being managed badly," wrote one person on the Twitter-like platform Weibo.

Lacking adequate medical infrastructure and primary care triage, China's rural interior is particularly vulnerable to health crises such as Covid.

- 'End of an era' -

In a major move towards unwinding years of hardline restrictions, China said Monday it would retire an app used to track travel to areas with infections.

The state-run "Communications Itinerary Card" was a central part of zero-Covid, keeping tabs on the movements of millions through their phone signal data.

It was one of a panoply of tracking apps that have governed everyday life through the pandemic. Most people still use local "health codes" run by their city or province to enter shops and offices.

Social media users hailed the retirement of the software, noting the symbolism of the government shutting down its main tracking app.

"Bye bye, this announces the end of an era, and also welcomes a brand new one," one person wrote on Weibo.

Others asked what would become of the mountains of data collected and hoped it would be deleted.

- 'Spreading rapidly' -

Kendra Schaefer, tech partner at research consultancy Trivium China, said the "political win of returning to normalcy is ginormous".

But that normalcy means the country faces a surge of cases it is ill-prepared to handle, with millions of elderly not fully vaccinated and underfunded hospitals lacking capacity to take on huge numbers of patients.

China has one intensive care unit bed per 10,000 people, Jiao Yahui, director of the Department of Medical Affairs at the National Health Commission, warned last week.

The official number of Covid cases has dropped sharply from an all-time high recorded last month, but top Chinese health expert Zhong Nanshan warned in state media Sunday that the Omicron variant was "spreading rapidly".

The easing of restrictions has also released pent-up demand for domestic travel, with state broadcaster CCTV saying Monday that flights from Beijing's two main airports were expected to soon return to 70 percent of 2019 levels.

NDTV
 
"Impossible" To Track: China As Beijing Sees "Rapidly Growing" Infections

China's top health body said Wednesday the true scale of coronavirus infections in the country is now "impossible" to track, with officials warning cases are rising rapidly in Beijing after the government abruptly abandoned its zero-Covid policy last week.
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After nearly three years of attempting to stamp out the virus, the sudden end of mass testing and quarantines has led to a corresponding drop in officially reported infections, which hit an all-time high only last month.

With testing no longer required for much of the country, China's National Health Commission on Wednesday admitted its numbers no longer reflected reality.

"Many asymptomatic people are no longer participating in nucleic acid testing, so it is impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infected people," the NHC said in a statement.

The statement comes after Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said the capital's new infections were "rapidly growing", according to state media.

Chinese leaders are determined to press ahead with opening up, with Beijing's tourism authority saying Tuesday that it would resume tour groups in and out of the capital.

But the country is facing a surge in cases that experts fear it is ill-equipped to manage, with millions of vulnerable elderly still not fully vaccinated and underfunded hospitals lacking the resources to deal with an expected influx of infected patients.

A line of about 50 people stretched out the door of the Puren fever clinic in Beijing on Wednesday, with multiple residents telling AFP they were infected with Covid.

"Basically, if we are lining up here, we are all infected. We would not come here if we weren't," one person waiting in line told AFP.

"I'm here with a senior member of my family, he's had a fever for nearly 10 days in a row now, so we are coming to do a checkup on him."

Medicine Shortage

Restaurants, shops and parks are now allowed to reopen, but residents are finding the path to living with the virus less than straightforward.

Many with symptoms have opted to self-medicate at home, while others are staying in to protect themselves from getting infected.

And businesses are struggling as COVID-19 rips through the population and affects their staffing.

As a result, Beijing's streets are largely empty.

Residents have complained of sold-out cold medicines and long lines at pharmacies, while Chinese search giant Baidu said that searches for fever-reducing Ibuprofen had risen 430 per cent over the past week.

Soaring demand for rapid antigen tests and medications has created a black market with astronomical prices, while buyers resort to sourcing the goods from "dealers" whose contacts are being passed around WeChat groups.

Authorities are cracking down, with market regulators hitting one business in Beijing with a 300,000 yuan ($43,000) fine for selling overpriced test kits, the local Beijing News reported Tuesday.

And in a sea change for a country where infection with the virus was once taboo and recovered patients faced discrimination, people are taking to social media to show off their test results and give detailed descriptions of their experience while sick.

"When my body temperature went past 37.2 degrees, I began to add some sugar and salt to my lemon water," Beijing-based Xiaohongshu social site user "Nina" wrote in one account intended as advice for those not yet infected.

"I've been resurrected!!" wrote another account owner in the caption of a photo showing a row of five positive antigen tests and one negative.

NDTV
 
Beijing Reports First Covid Deaths As China Eases Curbs

Two former Chinese state media journalists have died in the capital Beijing in recent days due to COVID-19, local media reported today, among the first reported fatalities since most epidemic control policies were removed on Dec. 7.

Yang Lianghua, a former People's Daily reporter, died on December 15, aged 74, while Zhou Zhichun, a former China Youth Daily editor, died on December 8, aged 77, according to financial magazine Caixin.

China's national health authority has not reported any official COVID deaths since dismantling many of its domestic epidemic control policies on December 7. The last official deaths were reported on Dec. 3, in Shandong and Sichuan provinces.

NDTV
 
"Worked To The Bone": Crematoriums In Beijing Buckle Under Covid Wave

Workers at Beijing crematoriums said Friday they are overwhelmed as China faces a surge in Covid cases that authorities warn could hit its underdeveloped rural hinterland during upcoming public holidays.

Covid-19 is spreading rapidly across China after three years of strict containment measures ended last week, with health authorities now admitting the true scale of the outbreak is "impossible" to track.

China's top Covid response body on Friday urged local governments to step up monitoring and treatment services for people returning to rural hometowns to visit family for upcoming New Year's Day and Lunar New Year celebrations.

The latter is the world's largest annual migration, with three years of pent-up demand due to prolonged zero-Covid domestic travel restrictions waiting to explode.

State media and Chinese health experts have downplayed the severity of Omicron, with expert Zhong Nanshan recently saying that Covid should be called the "coronavirus cold".

But millions of unvaccinated elderly people remain vulnerable, and there have been widespread shortages of antigen tests and fever medicines in shops.

Two Beijing funeral homes contacted by AFP confirmed they were operating 24 hours a day and offering same-day cremation services to keep up with a recent surge in demand, despite official data registering no new Covid deaths since December 4.

"We're being worked to the bone! Over 10 of our 60 staff are positive (for Covid) but we have no choice, it's been so busy lately," one crematorium staffer told AFP.

"We are cremating 20 bodies a day, mostly old people. A lot of people have been getting sick recently."

Another Beijing crematorium told AFP that there was a week-long waiting list for a spot.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Hong Kong estimated China could experience about a million Covid deaths this winter without timely intervention such as fourth-dose booster vaccinations and social restrictions.

China has only reported nine official deaths from Covid since mid-November, despite logging more than 10,000 daily infections since then.

There were no Covid deaths reported nationwide between May 28 and November 19.

In the earliest Wuhan outbreak, many deaths of Covid-positive patients went unreported due to strict national criteria for classifying Covid-related deaths, Chinese media reported at the time.

Closed loop

Managers of five nursing homes told Chinese media in a Thursday report that they were unable to procure antigen tests or medicines due to shortages, and had no emergency plans for a wide-scale outbreak.

Staff at multiple Beijing nursing homes contacted by AFP Friday refused to speak about conditions there.

Many elderly homes nationwide have continued pandemic-era "closed-loop" protocols in which staff are required to live on-site, according to notices posted online in recent days.

In addition, China's lack of a primary care system means that hospital facilities are easily swamped by an influx of people with relatively minor ailments.

Videos of Covid patients sitting on stools receiving saline drips outside crowded hospitals have also been going viral on social media in recent days.

AFP geolocated one video to a hospital in Hanchuan county, Hubei province, whose staff confirmed it was filmed Tuesday.

"The patients in the video volunteered to sit outside in the sun because it was... a little bit crowded inside," the staffer told AFP.

NDTV
 
China May See Over 1 Million Covid Deaths Through 2023, Predicts New Model

China's abrupt lifting of stringent COVID-19 restrictions could result in an explosion of cases and over a million deaths through 2023, according to new projections from the US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

According to the group's projections, cases in China would peak around April 1, when deaths would reach 322,000. About a third of China's population will have been infected by then, IHME Director Christopher Murray said.

China's national health authority has not reported any official COVID deaths since the lifting of COVID restrictions. The last official deaths were reported on December 3.

Total pandemic deaths stand at 5,235.

China lifted some of the world's toughest COVID restrictions in December after unprecedented public protests and is now experiencing a spike in infections, with fears COVID could sweep across its 1.4 billion population during next month's Lunar New Year holiday.

"Nobody thought they would stick to zero-COVID as long as they did," Murray said on Friday when the IHME projections were released online.

China's zero-COVID policy may have been effective at keeping earlier variants of the virus at bay, but the high transmissibility of Omicron variants made it impossible to sustain, he said.

The independent modeling group at the University of Washington in Seattle, which has been relied on by governments and companies throughout the pandemic, drew on provincial data and information from a recent Omicron outbreak in Hong Kong.

"China has since the original Wuhan outbreak barely reported any deaths. That is why we looked to Hong Kong to get an idea of the infection fatality rate," Murray said.

For its forecasts, IHME also uses information on vaccination rates provided by the Chinese government as well as assumptions on how various provinces will respond as infection rates increase.

Other experts expect some 60% of China's population will eventually be infected, with a peak expected in January, hitting vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, the hardest.

Key concerns include China's large pool of susceptible individuals, the use of less effective vaccines and low vaccine coverage among those 80 and older, who are at greatest risk of severe disease.

Other Models

Disease modelers at the University of Hong Kong predict that lifting COVID restrictions and simultaneously reopening all provinces in December 2022 through January 2023 would result in 684 deaths per million people during that timeframe, according to a paper released on Wednesday on the Medrxiv preprint server that has yet to undergo peer review.

Based on China's population of 1.41 billion, and without measures such as a mass vaccination booster campaign, that amounts to 964,400 deaths.

Another study published July 2022 in Nature Medicine by researchers at the School of Public Health at Fudan University in Shanghai predicted an Omicron wave absent restrictions would result in 1.55 million deaths over a six month period, and peak demand for intensive care units of 15.6 times higher than existing capacity.

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said there are 164 million people in China with diabetes, a risk factor for poor COVID outcomes. There are also 8 million people aged 80 and older who have never been vaccinated.

Chinese officials are now encouraging individuals to get boosted from a list of newer Chinese-made shots, however, the government is still reluctant to use foreign vaccines, Huang said.

China's National Health Commission said on Friday it was ramping up vaccinations and building stocks of ventilators and essential drugs.

NDTV
 
In COVID-hit Beijing, funeral homes and crematoriums are busy

Hearses bearing the dead lined the driveway to a designated COVID-19 crematorium in the Chinese capital on Saturday while workers at the city's dozen funeral homes were busier than normal, days after China reversed tight pandemic restrictions.

In recent days in Beijing the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has hit services from catering to parcel deliveries. Funeral homes and crematoriums across the city of 22 million are also struggling to keep up with demand as more workers and drivers testing positive for coronavirus call in sick.

China is yet to officially report any COVID deaths since Dec. 7 when the country abruptly ended many key tenets of its zero-COVID policy that had been championed by President Xi Jinping, following unprecedented public protests against the protocol.

A U.S.-based research institute said this week that the country could see an explosion of cases and over a million people in China could die of COVID in 2023. A sharp surge in deaths would test authorities' efforts to move China away from endless testing, lockdowns and heavy travel restrictions, and realign with a world that has largely reopened to live with the disease.

On Saturday afternoon, a Reuters journalist saw about 30 stationary hearses stopped in the driveway leading to the Dongjiao funeral home, a COVID-designated crematoriusm in Beijing.

Parked among them were an ambulance and a wagon with a sheet-wrapped corpse in the open trunk that was later picked up by workers in hazmat suits and moved to a preparatory room to await cremation. Three of the numerous chimneys billowed smoked continuously.

A few metres away from the crematorium, in a funeral parlour, the Reuters journalist saw about 20 yellow body bags containing corpses on the floor. Reuters could not immediately establish if the deaths were due to COVID.

The parking security operator and the owner of an urn shop at the funeral home building, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the number of deaths was above average in this period and was more when compared to the period before lifting of most pandemic curbs on Dec. 7.

Sick workers have also affected staffing at the roughly one dozen funeral parlours in Beijing.

"We've fewer cars and workers now," a staffer at Miyun Funeral Home told Reuters by phone, also speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that there was a mounting backlog of demand for cremation services. "We've many workers who tested positive."

It was not immediately clear if the struggle to meet the increased demand for cremation was also due to a rise in COVID-related deaths.

At Huairou Funeral Home, a body was kept for three days before it could be cremated, a staffer said.

"You can transport the body here yourself, it's been busy recently," the staffer said.

TRACKING DEATHS AND CASES

China's health authority last reported COVID deaths on Dec. 3. The Chinese capital last reported a fatality on Nov. 23.

Yet respected Chinese news outlet Caixin reported on Friday that two veteran state media journalists had died after contracting COVID-19 in Beijing, among the first known deaths since China dismantled most of its zero-COVID policies.

On Saturday, Caixin reported a 23-year-old medical student in Sichuan died of COVID on Dec. 14.

Still, the National Health Commission on Saturday reported no change to its official COVID death toll of 5,235 since the pandemic emerged in Wuhan province in late 2019.

Since lifting restrictions earlier this month, China has told its population of 1.4 billion to stay home if they have mild symptoms, as cities across China brace for their first waves of infections.

Had the strict containment policies been lifted earlier, say on Jan. 3 this year, 250,000 people in China would have died, prominent Chinese epidemiologist Wu Zunyou said on Saturday.

As of Dec. 5, the proportion of seriously or critically ill COVID patients had dropped to 0.18% of reported cases, Wu said, from 3.32% last year and 16.47% in 2020.

This shows China's fatality rate from the disease is gradually falling, he said, without elaborating.

Official figures on cases have become an unreliable guide as less testing is being done across the country following the easing of zero-COVID policies.

China stopped publishing the number of asymptomatic cases from Wednesday, citing a lack of PCR testing among people with no symptoms.

The lack of officially reported COVID deaths for the past 10 days has stirred debate on social media over data disclosure, fuelled also by a dearth of statistics over hospitalisations and the number of seriously ill.

"Why can't these statistics be found? What's going on? Did they not tally them or they just aren't announcing them?" one person on Chinese social media asked.

In Shanghai, more than 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Beijing, local education authorities on Saturday told most schools to hold classes online starting on Monday, to cope with worsening COVID infections across China.

In a sign of staffing crunches to come, Shanghai Disney Resort said on Saturday that entertainment offerings may reduce due to a smaller workforce, although the theme park was still operating normally.

At one of Shanghai's Christmas markets, in the city centre, there were few visitors on Saturday.

"Everyone is too scared," said one staffer at the ticket booth.

Reuters
 
<b>Shanghai schools to go online and nurseries to close as Covid spreads in China</b>

China's largest city, Shanghai, has ordered most of its schools to take classes online as Covid cases soar.

Nurseries and childcare centres will also shut from Monday, according to Shanghai's education bureau.

Restrictions were eased by Chinese authorities earlier this month following a wave of protests targeting China's zero-Covid strategy.

But the easing of strict lockdown measures has led to growing concerns over the spread of Covid in China.

Significant changes in the country's Covid testing and reporting systems have made it difficult to know just how widespread the virus has become, with data for the week ending 11 December showing a fall in the total number of new infections across the country after peaking the previous week.

But prior to the change in data collection, the number of cases was higher than that of the last Covid wave in April.

Hospitals and medical facilities have come under increasing strain, with temporary health centres and intensive care facilities being set up across the country.

In Shanghai, it has been reported that an extra 230,000 hospital beds have been made available.

Some schools in the city have also already stopped in-person classes because teachers and staff are ill.

In a statement posted on Chinese social media site WeChat on Saturday, Shanghai's education bureau announced that most year groups in primary and secondary schools would move to online learning from Monday.

Students and children who do not have alternative childcare arrangements can apply to attend school.

The statement said the measures were being put in place in order to protect the health of teachers and students in line with current coronavirus prevention measures.

The decision means that schools in the country's financial hub will be closed for in-person learning until the end of term on 17 January, when the Lunar New Year holiday starts.

Some Chinese social media users praised the decision, agreeing that it was best that students stay at home.

Others complained about the efficacy of online learning in relation to in-person teaching and the extra strains put on working parents.

Following its abandonment of its zero-Covid strategy, there has been an explosion of self-reported cases across the country, with many cities eerily quiet as large numbers of people isolate at home, either sick with Covid or trying to avoid becoming infected, reports the BBC's Celia Hatton.

There are concerns that China's health infrastructure is not prepared to cope with a rapid increase in patients - especially as Covid spreads among the elderly, many of whom are not fully vaccinated.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-64010209
 
CHINA’S CITIES BATTLE FIRST WAVE OF COVID SURGE AS WIDER SPREAD LOOMS

Streets in major Chinese cities were eerily quiet on Sunday as people stayed home to protect themselves from a surge in COVID-19 cases that has hit urban centres from north to south.

China is currently in the first of an expected three waves of COVID cases this winter, according to the country’s chief epidemiologist, Wu Zunyou. Cases could multiply across the country if people follow typical travel patterns of returning to their home areas in a mass transit movement for the Lunar New Year holiday next month.

China is also yet to officially report any COVID deaths since Dec. 7, when the country abruptly ended most restrictions key to a zero-COVID tolerance policy following unprecedented public protests against the protocol. The strategy had been championed by President Xi Jinping.

As part of the easing of the zero-COVID curbs, mass testing for the virus has ended, casting doubt on whether officially reported case numbers can capture the full scale of the outbreak. China reported some 2,097 new symptomatic COVID infections on Dec. 17.

In Beijing, the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has already hit services from catering to parcel deliveries. Funeral homes and crematoriums across the city of 22 million are also struggling to keep up with demand.

Social media posts also showed empty subways in the city of Xian in China’s northwest, while internet users complained of delays to deliveries.

In Chengdu, streets were deserted but food delivery times were improving, said a resident surnamed Zhang, after services began to adapt to the recent surge in cases.

Getting hold of antigen test kits was still difficult however, she said. Her recent order had been redirected to hospitals, she said, citing the provider.

‘1 PEAK, 3 WAVES, 3 MONTHS’
In Shanghai, authorities said schools should move most classes online from Monday, and in nearby Hangzhou most school grades were encouraged to finish the winter semester early.

In Guangzhou, those already doing online class as well as pre-schoolers should not prepare for a return to school, said the education bureau.

Speaking at a conference in Beijing on Saturday, chief epidemiologist Wu of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said the current outbreak would peak this winter and run in three waves for about three months, according to a state media report of his speech.

The first wave would run from mid-December through mid-January, largely in cities, before a second wave would start from late January to mid-February next year, triggered by the movement of people ahead of the week-long New Year holiday.

China will celebrate Lunar New Year starting on Jan. 21. The holiday normally sees hundreds of millions of people travelling home to spend time with family.

A third wave of cases would run from late February to mid-March as people returned to work after the holiday, Wu said.

A U.S.-based research institute said this week that the country could see an explosion of cases and over a million people in China could die of COVID in 2023. read more

Wu said severe cases in China had declined over the last years, and that vaccination that has already taken place offered a certain degree of protection. He said those in the community that are vulnerable should be protected, while recommending booster vaccines for the general public.

Almost 87% of over 60s have been fully vaccinated, but only 66.4% of people over the age of 80 have completed a full course of vaccination, said official news agency Xinhua.

ARY
 
China's Cities Battle 1st Wave Of Covid Surge As Wider Spread Looms

Streets in major Chinese cities were eerily quiet on Sunday as people stayed home to protect themselves from a surge in COVID-19 cases that has hit urban centres from north to south.

China is currently in the first of an expected three waves of COVID cases this winter, according to the country's chief epidemiologist, Wu Zunyou. Cases could multiply across the country if people follow typical travel patterns of returning to their home areas in a mass transit movement for the Lunar New Year holiday next month.

China is also yet to officially report any COVID deaths since Dec. 7, when the country abruptly ended most restrictions key to a zero-COVID tolerance policy following unprecedented public protests against the protocol. The strategy had been championed by President Xi Jinping.

As part of the easing of the zero-COVID curbs, mass testing for the virus has ended, casting doubt on whether officially reported case numbers can capture the full scale of the outbreak. China reported some 2,097 new symptomatic COVID infections on Dec. 17.

In Beijing, the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has already hit services from catering to parcel deliveries. Funeral homes and crematoriums across the city of 22 million are also struggling to keep up with demand.

Social media posts also showed empty subways in the city of Xian in China's northwest, while internet users complained of delays to deliveries.

In Chengdu, streets were deserted but food delivery times were improving, said a resident surnamed Zhang, after services began to adapt to the recent surge in cases.

Getting hold of antigen test kits was still difficult however, she said. Her recent order had been redirected to hospitals, she said, citing the provider.

'1 PEAK, 3 WAVES, 3 MONTHS'

In Shanghai, authorities said schools should move most classes online from Monday, and in nearby Hangzhou most school grades were encouraged to finish the winter semester early.

In Guangzhou, those already doing online class as well as pre-schoolers should not prepare for a return to school, said the education bureau.

Speaking at a conference in Beijing on Saturday, chief epidemiologist Wu of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said the current outbreak would peak this winter and run in three waves for about three months, according to a state media report of his speech.

The first wave would run from mid-December through mid-January, largely in cities, before a second wave would start from late January to mid-February next year, triggered by the movement of people ahead of the week-long New Year holiday.

China will celebrate Lunar New Year starting on Jan. 21. The holiday normally sees hundreds of millions of people travelling home to spend time with family.

A third wave of cases would run from late February to mid-March as people returned to work after the holiday, Wu said.

A US-based research institute said this week that the country could see an explosion of cases and over a million people in China could die of COVID in 2023.

Wu said severe cases in China had declined over the last years, and that vaccination that has already taken place offered a certain degree of protection. He said those in the community that are vulnerable should be protected, while recommending booster vaccines for the general public.

Almost 87% of over 60s have been fully vaccinated, but only 66.4% of people over the age of 80 have completed a full course of vaccination, said official news agency Xinhua.

NDTV
 
China Megacity's New Work Rule For Covid Patients Marks Big U-Turn

People with Covid-19 symptoms in one of China's largest cities can now go to work "as normal", state media reported Monday, a dramatic reversal in a country where a single case could previously send thousands into lockdown.

The world's most populous nation is unwinding years of hardline coronavirus policy, with Covid spreading rapidly in the wake of the official end of mass lockdowns, testing and quarantines.

And with authorities admitting the outbreak is "impossible" to track, the southern megacity of Chongqing -- home to around 32 million people -- became one of the first parts of China to let people work normally even with visible symptoms, the Chongqing Daily reported Monday, citing a notice from municipal authorities.

The notice, issued Sunday, said that "mildly symptomatic" government, party and state workers "can work as normal after undertaking personal protections in accordance with their physical conditions and needs of their jobs".

It also urged residents not to take virus tests "unnecessarily" or require people to show a negative result, with exceptions for certain facilities such as care homes, schools and prisons.

Local governments across China have generally encouraged people to isolate at home while recovering from the disease -- a dramatic shift from the previous policy of herding people into state quarantine facilities.

On Sunday, eastern Zhejiang province -- a major economic hub home to more than 60 million people -- said those with mild symptoms could "continue to work, if need be, on the prerequisite of taking personal protections".

Authorities have stuck to their guns despite evidence that some hospitals and crematoriums are struggling with spiking cases and deaths, as well as fears of a wave of infections in underdeveloped rural areas during the upcoming public holidays.

Visits to hospitals and clinics surged in the days following China's lifting of restrictions, though the World Health Organization said the virus was already spreading widely in the country as "the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease".

Cities and provinces across China have been forced to adjust their public health offerings as the country learns to coexist with the virus for the first time.

In the eastern city of Suzhou, authorities have hurriedly converted testing sites into makeshift stations for fever treatment, according to state media.

Other cities, including the capital Beijing, have handed out free medical kits to some residents and urged patients to choose online consultations instead of visiting hospitals, state media reported.

NDTV
 
China To Only Count Covid Deaths Due To "Respiratory Failures": Report

China on Tuesday said only Covid deaths from "respiratory failures" will be included in the official death count, as the country witnessed a massive spike in infections fuelled by new variants of the Omicron strain.

Beijing, which is hit by the BF.7 variant of the Omicron strain, has announced five more deaths in addition to the two on Monday, the first official fatalities since the government abandoned its stringent anti-virus controls earlier this month following widespread anti-government protests against the Zero-Covid policy.

According to health officials, Chinese cities are currently hit by the highly transmissible Omicron strains mainly BA.5.2 and BF.7.

On Tuesday, China's National Health Commission (NHC) clarified that only Covid-19 patients who die from respiratory failure will be counted in the official death count. The clarification follows media reports that many more died after becoming infected amid rising demand at funeral homes and crematoriums, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper reported.

The commission issued a notice clarifying how it is calculating the death count from the virus in what it calls a "scientific and realistic manner".

The new guidelines narrow the criteria for counting Covid-19 deaths, removing cases such as patients who had a heart attack after becoming infected.

"Deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure resulting from Covid-19 will be classified as Covid-19 deaths, while deaths caused by other underlying diseases, such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, will not be counted as Covid-induced deaths," the Post quoted Wang Guiqiang, an adviser to the NHC and director of the infectious diseases department at Peking University First Hospital as saying on Tuesday.

Wang said Omicron, the variant fuelling the current surge in cases, was becoming less lethal and China was increasing the vaccination rate, which meant the pattern of infections and deaths were changing.

In the initial stages of the outbreak, which began in the central city of Wuhan in December 2019, most deaths were caused by coronavirus-induced respiratory failure. But now, he said, Omicron mainly attacks the upper respiratory tract and while some patients may develop pneumonia, few will suffer respiratory failure.

"From a clinical practice, it can be seen that the main cause of death after infection with Omicron is a chronic illness, while respiratory failure directly caused by the Covid-19 infection is rare," Wang said.

"We don't avoid [talking about] the hazards of Covid-19, but at the same time we must view it from a scientific perspective," he said.

When asked about China's reportage of Covid-19 death, Benjamin Cowling, head of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Hong Kong, said the number of deaths reported since the restrictions eased was a bit smaller than we might expect, but consistent with the very low rate of PCR testing in China now.

"I think there are deaths due to Covid-19 in China which are not laboratory confirmed and therefore not counted in the official tally, but that is true anywhere in the world and it's not something unique to China," he told the Post on Monday.

Meanwhile, Beijing is experiencing a massive wave of the BF.7 Omicron virus.

According to one estimate, over 70 per cent of Beijing's population has been hit by the virus, which confined millions of people to their homes.

Those who contracted the virus included scores of Beijing-based diplomats, their families as well as journalists besides a vast number of the city's population.

For days together Beijing wore a deserted look with less traffic on city roads.

The striking feature of the crisis is that China has lost count of the cases as it stopped public testing for nearly two weeks.

As a result, people are forced to buy self-testing antigen kits which are now being sold in black at exorbitant prices.

Hospitals in Beijing are facing staff shortages and an influx of patients since the policy U-turn, the Post report said.

Many residents in the capital are struggling to get medicines, with long queues at hospitals and a spike in the calls for ambulances.

With confusion about the government's handling of the virus, there is a growing concern about how to protect millions of China's elderly people, the majority of whom have not been vaccinated.

The elderly, aged 65 and above, exceed 200 million people, accounting for 14.2 per cent of the Chinese population as of the end of 2021, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.

Data showed elderly people who have underlying diseases and complications such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases are susceptible to severe cases.

"It's necessary to set up a hierarchical diagnosis and treatment system for elderly people, which could diagnose seniors and treat them better based on their health status," Chen Erzhen, a deputy head of Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai said.

Leading Chinese epidemiologists say the epidemic will peak in January and February, although the number of infections will continue to increase in the short term.

NDTV
 
"Wave Of Fatalities" Rippling Through China, Not In Official Data, Reports Say

China appears to be seeing an increase in Covid deaths across a swath of the country that aren't being reported in government figures, according to social media posts, adding to speculation that officials are masking the full impact of their abrupt shift away from Covid Zero.

People from Hebei in the north to Guangdong in the south have flocked to China's Twitter-style Weibo platform to post about longer-than-normal queues at funeral homes, and crematoriums handling a growing number of bodies. The reports indicate the wave of fatalities that, until now, has been centered in the capital of Beijing - which has officially had seven deaths in recent days despite an explosion in infections - is quietly rippling through less prominent parts of the country.

A man who said he worked at a crematorium in Hebei wrote in a Weibo post, which has since been deleted, that his facility is performing as many as 22 cremations a day from about four-to-five before December. Screenshots of the original post, which can't be verified by Bloomberg News, continue to circulate across Chinese social media. The poster didn't respond to a request for comment.

A screenshot allegedly showing the rising number of obituaries published by a university to commemorate staff who have recently died has also been widely shared. A Weibo poster in Guangdong said the crematorium he went to had staff working overtime to deal with a spate of deaths among the elderly, while a man in Henan said a funeral parlor he attended was so overwhelmed that bodies were being put in corridors.

In Chongqing, which hasn't officially declared a Covid death since late-November, a woman said her grandfather died over the weekend and she faced a long wait for a death certificate. How China can have so few fatalities - less than 20 since the first tentative steps toward easing Covid controls in late-November - and why they're concentrated in Beijing have also become frequently asked questions across social media platforms.

The skepticism has a solid foundation. The low official death tally runs counter to what's been seen across the world, and even in places like Shanghai and Hong Kong, where omicron's arrival sparked a surge in infections followed swiftly by a wave of fatalities.

Smoke rises from a crematorium at Dongjiao Funeral Parlor, reportedly designated to handle Covid fatalities, in Beijing, on Dec. 19.

But it's been particularly notable given China spent little time putting in place mitigation measures to prepare for this month's dismantling of Covid Zero: the population, especially the elderly, are under-vaccinated, and officials have only recently vowed to add more hospital beds.

The real number of deaths may also have been masked by a change in how to define a Covid fatality. Caixin reported that China had narrowed the guidelines, issuing new guidance this month that notes that some patients who were Covid-positive may have died from underlying illness, and medical facilities have 24 hours to ascertain a person's cause of death. Previously, anyone who died while Covid-positive was considered a Covid death.

Fatalities are just one data point that's evoked suspicion, with the country also abandoning efforts to count all infections after scrapping frequent PCR testing for residents.

It's in China's interest to downplay the severity of the situation. Its vast propaganda apparatus has shifted from trumpeting President Xi Jinping's flagship Covid Zero approach and upbraiding other nations who had shifted to living with the virus, to downplaying its risks and likening Covid to a cold.

China has maintained a tight grip on information throughout the pandemic, from the earliest days in Wuhan to sporadic updates on vaccination progress and closely controlled press conferences. That makes the snapshots on social media an important way to gauge the reality of the country's worst ever Covid outbreak.

NDTV
 
Crematoriums Across China Struggle Amid Increase In Covid Cases

Crematoriums across China told AFP Tuesday they were straining to deal with an influx of bodies, as the country battles a wave of Covid cases that authorities have admitted is impossible to track.

Hospitals are struggling and pharmacy shelves have been stripped bare in the wake of the Chinese government's sudden decision last month to lift nearly three years of lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing.

In Chongqing -- a city of 30 million where authorities this week urged people with "mild" Covid symptoms to go to work -- one crematorium told AFP they had run out of space to keep bodies.

"The number of bodies picked up in recent days is many times more than previously," a staffer who did not give their name said.

"We are very busy, there is no more cold storage space for bodies," they added.

"We are not sure (if it's related to Covid), you need to ask the leaders in charge."

In the southern megapolis of Guangzhou, one crematorium in Zengcheng district told AFP they were cremating over 30 bodies a day.

"We have bodies assigned to us from other districts. There's no other option," an employee said.

Another crematorium in the city said they were "extremely busy" as well.

"It's three or four times busier than in previous years, we are cremating over 40 bodies per day when before it was only a dozen or so," a staffer said.

"The whole of Guangzhou is like this. We've constantly been receiving calls," they added, stressing that it was "hard to say" whether the surge in bodies was linked to Covid.

In the central city of Baoding, an employee of a crematorium told AFP: "Of course we're busy, which workplace isn't busy now?"

In the capital Beijing, local authorities on Tuesday reported just five deaths from Covid-19 -- up from two the previous day.

Outside the city's Dongjiao Crematorium, AFP reporters saw more than a dozen vehicles waiting to enter, most of them hearses or funerary coaches displaying sombre-coloured ribbons and bouquets of flowers.

Delays in entering the crematorium were obvious, with a driver towards the front of the queue telling AFP he had already waited several hours.

It was not immediately clear whether an increase in Covid deaths was causing the backlog, and crematorium staff declined to answer questions.

The end to mandatory testing has made the toll of China's Covid surge difficult to track, with authorities last week admitting it is now "impossible" to tally the full scale of the sick.

NDTV
 
China Covid infection surge puts end of global emergency in doubt – WHO
US offers assistance to China where experts warn there could be a million Covid-19 deaths in 2023

It may be too early to declare the global end of the Covid-19 pandemic emergency because of a potentially devastating wave to come in China, according to several leading scientists and World Health Organization advisers.

Their views represent a shift since China began to dismantle its zero-Covid policy last week after a spike in infections and unprecedented public protests. Projections have suggested the world’s second-largest economy could face more than a million deaths in 2023 after the abrupt change in course.

China’s zero-Covid approach kept infections and deaths comparatively low among the population of 1.4 billion, but a relaxation in rules has changed the global picture, experts said.

“The question is whether you can call it post-pandemic when such a significant part of the world is actually just entering its second wave,” said Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans, who sits on a WHO committee tasked with advising on the status of the Covid emergency.

“It’s clear that we are in a very different phase [of the pandemic], but in my mind, that pending wave in China is a wild card.”

As recently as September, the WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had said “the end is in sight” for the pandemic. Last week, he told reporters in Geneva that he was “hopeful” of an end to the emergency some time in 2023.

Most countries removed Covid restrictions as threats of dangerous new variants of the virus or a resurgence of infections receded in the second half of 2022.

Tedros’s earlier comments spurred hopes that the UN agency could soon remove the highest alert level designation for Covid, which has been in place since January 2020.

Koopmans and other WHO advisory committee members are due to make their recommendation on the alert level in late January. Tedros makes the final decision and is not obliged to follow the committee’s recommendation.

On Tuesday, cities across China scrambled to install hospital beds and build fever screening clinics, as authorities reported five more deaths and international concern grew about Beijing’s surprise decision to let the virus run free.

Alongside the risks for China, some global health figures have warned that allowing the virus to spread domestically could also give it the chance to mutate, potentially creating a dangerous new variant.

At the moment, data from China shared with both the WHO and the virus database GISAID shows the variants circulating there are the globally dominant Omicron and its offshoots, although the picture is incomplete due to a lack of full data.

“The bottom line is, it’s not clear the wave in China is variant-driven, or whether it just represents a breakdown of containment,” said Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London.

The United States on Tuesday indicated it stands ready to assist China with its surging outbreak, warning that an uncontrolled spread there may have implications for the global economy.

“We’re prepared to continue to support countries around the world, including China, on this and other Covid-related health support,” state department spokesperson Ned Price said. “For us this is not about politics, this is not about geopolitics.”

Asked if the US had offered to provide China with vaccines, Price said: “I’m not going to go into private discussions, but we’ve made the point many times publicly that we are the largest donor of Covid-19 vaccines around the world.

“We also note that what happens in China does have implications for the global economy.

“We also know that whenever the virus is spreading anywhere widely in an uncontrolled fashion, it has the potential for variants to emerge.”

The Guardian
 
China Lifting Covid Lockdown Could Kill Upto 2.1 Million People: Report

Between 1.3 and 2.1 million lives could be at risk if China lifts its zero-COVID policy given low vaccination and booster rates as well as a lack of hybrid immunity, according to London-based global health intelligence and analytics firm.

"Mainland China has very low levels of immunity across its population. Its citizens were vaccinated with domestically produced jabs Sinovac and Sinopharm which have been proven to have significantly lower efficacy and provide less protection against infection and death," according to analysis by Airfinity.

The global health intelligence company had said China's zero-COVID strategy also means the population has almost no naturally acquired immunity through the previous infection.

"As a result of these factors, our analysis shows if mainland China sees a similar wave to Hong Kong's in February, its healthcare system could be pushed to capacity as there could be between 167 and 279 million cases nationwide, which could lead to between 1.3 and 2.1 million deaths," it added.

Airfinity's Head of Vaccines and Epidemiology Dr Louise Blair said it is essential for China to ramp up vaccinations to raise immunity in order to lift its zero-COVID policy, especially given how large its elderly population is. "Subsequently, China would need hybrid immunity to allow for the country to brace future waves with minimal impact."

"This has proven effective in other countries and regions; for example, while Hong Kong efforts to vaccinate the vulnerable prior to opening likely only dampened the impact of its first wave, its protection has been enhanced by hybrid immunity from mass infection leading to much less impactful and deadly COVID-19 waves," he added.

On Monday, Chinese health authorities announced two coronavirus deaths, both in Beijing, which is witnessing its worst outbreak since the start of the COVID pandemic.

These were the first officially reported deaths since the dramatic easing of restrictions on December 7, CNN reported. This comes as Chinese social media posts have pointed to a surge in demand at Beijing's funeral homes and crematoriums.
 
The head of the World Health Organization on Wednesday said he was "very concerned" about an unprecedented wave of Covid cases in China, as the health body urged Beijing to accelerate vaccination of the most vulnerable.

"WHO is very concerned over the evolving situation in China, with increasing reports of severe disease" Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a weekly news conference, appealing for detailed information on disease severity, hospital admissions and intensive care requirements.

"WHO is supporting China to focus its efforts on vaccinating people at the highest risk across the country, and we continue to offer our support for clinical care and protecting its health system", he added.

Since 2020, China has imposed strict health restrictions as part of a so-called "zero Covid" policy.

But the government ended most of those measures without notice in early December amid growing public exasperation and a significant impact on the economy.

The number of cases has since soared, raising fears of a high mortality rate among the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable.

Chinese authorities said on Tuesday that only those who had directly died of respiratory failure caused by the virus would now be counted under Covid death statistics.

The change in the criteria for recording virus deaths means most are no longer counted, and China said on Wednesday that not a single person had died of Covid-19 the previous day.

WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan stressed the need for more vaccinations: "We've been saying this for weeks that this highly infectious virus was always going to be very hard to stop completely, with just public health and social measures".

"And most countries have really transitioned to a mixed strategy".

"Vaccination is the exit strategy in that sense from the impact of a wave of Omicron", the prevalent Covid variant.
 
China Is Likely Registering 1 Million Covid Cases, 5,000 Deaths A Day: Report

China is likely experiencing 1 million Covid infections and 5,000 virus deaths every day as it grapples with what is expected to be the biggest outbreak the world has ever seen, according to a new analysis.

The situation could get even worse for the country of 1.4 billion people. This current wave may see the daily case rate rise to 3.7 million in January, according to Airfinity Ltd., a London-based research firm that focuses on predictive health analytics and has been tracking the pandemic since it first emerged. There'll likely then be another surge of infections that will push the daily peak to 4.2 million in March, the group estimated.

Its modeling of the scale and toll of China's outbreak, which uses provincial data, shows the impact of the country's abrupt pivot away from Covid Zero far exceeds the government's tally.
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A traveler in protective gear at a train station in Beijing.

Officially, China reported 2,966 new cases for Wednesday and there have been fewer than 10 Covid deaths since the beginning of December. But that contrasts with a growing chorus of reports that hospitals are being overwhelmed with patients and crematoriums are being pushed well beyond their capacity.

Changes to how the government reports virus figures is also a factor. China has largely shut down its vast network of mass-testing booths and scrapped efforts to include every single infection in the daily tally, leaving residents to rely on rapid tests with no obligation to report the results. The country's health regulator also quietly adopted a narrower definition for what is considered a Covid death - and much more selective than what many Western nations use - making it difficult to gauge the real toll from the current deluge of infections.

These changes mean "the official data is unlikely to be a true reflection of the outbreak being experienced across the country," said Louise Blair, Airfinity's head of vaccines and epidemiology, in a statement. "This change could downplay the extent of deaths seen in China."

Accurately capturing the Covid situation remains difficult across the world as a pivot to living with the virus means fewer countries test frequently. The emergence of the highly transmissible omicron variant sparked a jump in infections, including in the US which posted its highest daily case count to date at nearly 1.4 million infections in January 2022. That coincided with the global number exceeding 4 million, according to Our World in Data.

NDTV
 
Covid Surge Rampages Through Shanghai Virtually Unchecked

Months after Shanghai endured a brutal lockdown to stop the spread of Covid, the virus is starting to make its way virtually unchecked through the megacity's 25 million population.

Hospitals are struggling to cope with the numbers of infected patients, pharmacies are turning customers away empty-handed, businesses are closing because of staff sickness, most schools have closed and usage of public transport is plummeting.

At Tongren Hospital, one of Shanghai's biggest public hospitals, doctors in the intensive care unit were using hallways to handle the overflow of seriously ill. Outside one so-called fever clinic, several dozen visibly sick people were forced to wait in the cold. Several pharmacies near the hospital were no longer allowing people to enter, saying they had run out of cold and fever medicine.

Health-care employees described an increasingly dire situation of too many patients and staff falling sick. Cases have also increased after the city stopped requiring people to show negative PCR test results before entering a hospital.

Daniel, a medical worker at a public hospital, said the city wasn't well prepared for such a severe scenario. A physician at a private hospital in Shanghai who told Bloomberg a week earlier that everything was calm said the outlook has worsened. “Shanghai is beginning to look a lot like Beijing in terms of infections,” he said.

A cancer specialist at one public hospital said that she was told that all doctors would need to work in ER because it was overrun by patients with fever and many colleagues were out sick. While the number of absent workers in her own clinic meant she couldn't afford to transfer, the hospital threatened to punish doctors by taking away their bonuses if they didn't agree, she said. The specialist is avoiding eating, drinking and going to the toilet at work to limit her chance of catching Covid.

For the city's residents, the worsening outbreak is a painful reminder of the misery —- and futility — of the two-month lockdown, which saw food shortages in one of China's richest cities.

“We are now repeating what we got through during the city lockdown: lack of delivery capacity, no drugs, super busy hospitals, kids being sent home,” said Peter Hu, an auto company engineer and father of a 2-year-old boy. “Thinking about all this, I'm so mad that our time during the lockdown has been totally wasted.”

Shanghai's economy shrank almost 14% in the second quarter as the lockdown in the financial and trading hub shuttered factories, curbed consumer spending and disrupted operations at the world's largest port. The lockdown was lifted at the start of June.

This time round, many residents are choosing to stay at home — either because they are infected with Covid or they are trying to avoid it. The subway operator cut services because of a drop in passenger numbers and staff getting sick.

In the latest week, Shanghai subway usage was down 51% compared to the same period in 2019, according to Bloomberg analysis of the transit data. That compares with a month ago, when metro ridership was 18% below the same period three years earlier.

Businesses are closing. At Art Park mall, not far from Tongren Hospital, popular bistro Baker & Spice told customers that it was no longer serving food because the cooks all had Covid.

Hu, the auto company engineer, has been living in a hotel near his office for a week to avoid potentially infecting his family. So far, Hu has tested negative, but he is losing patience.

“Lately I keep asking friends who get infected if their symptoms are mild,” he said. “I'm thinking to actively get infected by a mild-symptom friend and this terrible life can be over.”

NDTV
 
Why China Has Brought This Huge Covid Surge Upon Itself

The tsunami of Covid-19 that's taking hold across China is spurring concern that a dangerous new virus variant could emerge for the first time in more than a year, just as genetic sequencing to catch such a threat is dwindling.

The situation in China is unique because of the path it's followed throughout the pandemic. While almost every other part of the world has battled infections and embraced vaccinations with potent mRNA shots to varying degrees, China largely sidestepped both. The result is a population with low levels of immunity facing a wave of disease caused by the most contagious strain of the virus yet to circulate.

The expected surge of infections and deaths are taking hold in China within a black box since the government is no longer releasing detailed Covid data. The spread has medical experts and political leaders in the US and elsewhere worried about another round of disease caused by the mutating virus. Meanwhile, the number of cases sequenced globally each month to find those changes has plunged.

"There will certainly be more omicron subvariants developing in China in the coming days, weeks and months, but what the world must anticipate in order to recognise it early and take rapid action is a completely new variant of concern," said Daniel Lucey, a fellow at the Infectious Diseases Society of America and professor at Dartmouth University's Geisel School of Medicine. "It could be more contagious, more deadly, or evade drugs, vaccines and detection from existing diagnostics."

The closest precedent to what could happen, Lucey says, is the experience with delta in India in late 2020 when millions of people were infected over a short period of time and the deadly strain raced around the globe. While it's not inevitable, the world must protectively prepare for such an event so that vaccines, treatments and other necessary measures can be ready, he said.

Tracking

China is closely watching omicron subvariants circulating in the country, Xu Wenbo, director at the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, said on December 20 at a briefing in Beijing. It has established a national Covid viral sequencing database, which will receive genetic sequences from three hospitals in every province each week to catch any emerging variants, he said.

"This will allow us to monitor in real-time how omicron subvariants are circulating in China and their makeup," he said.

There is little clarity now about infections and deaths in China, after the country largely abandoned its mass testing regime and narrowed the way it measures Covid mortality.

Diverging Paths

There are two paths the virus could take in China. Omicron and its hundreds of subvariants may sweep directly through, likely in several waves, leaving no room for other contenders - as it has in the rest of the world for all of 2022. Vaccination and infections will boost immunity until eventually antibodies in the population will help control serious disease.

"It might be that China catches up, and what comes out is more of what we have already seen," said Stuart Turville, a virologist at the University of New South Wales' Kirby Institute, who has conducted research showing that existing antibodies in some people bind even to emerging variants. "Our antibodies are mature enough to deal with them."

The other possibility is that something else entirely develops, much like the way the original omicron emerged in southern Africa in late 2021. That could pose a novel threat for the world.

Omicron "came out of nowhere," Turville said. "It made an evolutionary change in a way that's different. If that's the path, and it spreads more easily, there might be another parachuting event, where it takes a trajectory we don't expect."

Lagging Immunity

The fact that China doesn't have a lot of previous exposure to the virus could work in its favour when it comes to the risk of new variants. In most of the world, the virus has been under severe pressure, forced to mutate like a contortionist to get around existing antibodies, Turville said. That may not be necessary in China.

"It's a different situation," said Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban. "It's going through a population that doesn't have a lot of immunity. Just because there are more infections doesn't mean we'll have nastier infections."

A medical worker assists a patient at a fever clinic treating Covid-19 patients in Beijing on December 21.

On the other hand, it may give other new variants a chance to take off because there isn't such a bar of immunity, Sigal said. That could be problematic if something worse emerges.

That is Turville's primary concern.

"Maybe it will go down a different route because it's not under pressure and there is more room to move," he said. "It could be a seismic shift, something that's completely different. It may be a low probability, but it's a probability and we have to be ready for that. At the moment, it's crystal ball gazing."

Omicron doesn't penetrate as deeply in the lower respiratory tract or do as much harm as some of the earlier strains. Its superpowers include its contagiousness and ability to evade existing immunity, a combination that slammed the door on other variants - including those that could have been more virulent.

Low Risk

Not everyone is concerned. Stephen Goldstein, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Utah, said the differences in the immunity landscape between China and the rest of the world makes it unlikely that the emerging omicron subvariants will have advantages over what is already circulating.

"With respect to new dangerous variants emerging from China, I'm not particularly concerned right now," he said. "I don't think the situation in China significantly affects the situation everywhere else," he said. "Could something out of the blue emerge and cause problems? Maybe - but we can't predict it and it isn't what I expect," he said.

While Covid science has become highly politicized in China, officials there also say the danger is remote, even as omicron continues to mutate.

To Catch a Killer

Yet the global pullback from sequencing Covid could mean a new, possibly dangerous variant evades detection until it's spreading widely.

"This will bite us," said Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization's Covid-19 technical lead. "We need to have some eyes around the world on this," she said.

The virus "hasn't settled down into a predictable pattern," the WHO scientist said. "We know that it will continue to evolve. And this notion that it will only become more mild is false. It could - and we hope so - but that's not a guarantee."

NDTV
 
How Accurate Are China's COVID-19 Death Numbers?

China's narrow criteria for identifying deaths caused by COVID-19 will underestimate the true toll of the pandemic's current wave there and could make it harder to communicate the best ways for people to protect themselves, foreign health experts warn.

Only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after contracting COVID-19 will be classified as having been caused by the coronavirus, a leading Chinese medical expert said on Tuesday.

Deaths from complications at other sites in the body, including underlying conditions made worse by the virus, would be excluded from the official toll, said Wang Guiqiang, head of the infectious disease department at Peking University First Hospital.

Experts familiar with hospital protocols in China told Reuters that such cases were not always excluded previously, though sometimes COVID-19 would be ruled out as a cause of death if a formerly positive patient had tested negative a day or two before dying.

Wang said the criteria had changed because the Omicron variant is less likely to cause other life-threatening symptoms, though China's hospitals are still required to judge each case to ascertain precisely whether or not COVID-19 was the ultimate cause.

The methods for counting COVID-19 deaths have varied across countries in the nearly three years since the pandemic began.

Yet disease experts outside of China say this specific approach would miss several other widely recognised types of potentially fatal COVID-19 complications, from blood clots to heart attacks as well as sepsis and kidney failure.

Some of these complications can increase the chances of death at home, particularly for people who are not aware that they should seek care for these symptoms.

The new definition "clearly won't capture all deaths from COVID-19," said Dr. Aaron Glatt, an infectious diseases expert at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital in New York and a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "To say you're going to ignore anything else going on in the body makes no sense and is scientifically inaccurate."

Last month, Korean researchers reported that 33 per cent of Omicron-related deaths between July 2021 and March 2022 at one large hospital were due to causes other than pneumonia.

CAN CHINA'S COVID DATA BE TRUSTED?

With one of the lowest COVID-19 death tolls in the world, China has been routinely accused of downplaying infections and deaths for political reasons.

A June 2020 study of the country's initial outbreak in Wuhan starting in late 2019 estimated 36,000 could have died at the time, or 10 times the official figure.

A study published by the Lancet in April, which looked at COVID-19 related mortality in 74 countries and territories over 2020-2021, estimated there were 17,900 excess deaths in China over the period, compared to an official death toll of 4,820.

Globally, the study estimated 18.2 million excess deaths in 2021-2022, compared with reported COVID-19 deaths of 5.94 million.

The new announcement from China raised concerns the government was seeking to disguise the true impact of relaxing its draconian "zero-COVID" controls after nearly three years of disruptive lockdowns and mandatory mass testing.

Despite widespread reports that funeral homes and crematoriums are struggling to cope with a surge in demand, China's official death numbers have not spiked, with no new fatalities reported for Dec. 21 and only seven deaths reported since the government announced on Dec. 8 that "zero-COVID" restrictions would be removed.

China actually cut its accumulated death toll by one on December 20, bringing the total to 5,241.

China's National Health Commission did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the country's COVID-19 statistics and excess mortality.

Even if China were to continue defining COVID-19 deaths more broadly, the official data is still unlikely to reflect the situation on the ground, given how quickly infections are now spreading, said Chen Jiming, a medical researcher at China's Foshan University.

"The reported counts of cases and deaths are only a very small portion of the true values," he said.

Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong's School of Public Health, said the official death tally would be very low even if a broader definition were in use, "because so little testing is being done" now that China has discontinued mass surveillance.

On the other hand, Cowling said, labeling every person who died while positive for COVID-19 as having died from the disease could lead to an over-count. Such an approach "can also be criticised because it can, and has, included coincidental deaths such as in people hit by a bus while having mild COVID-19."

Dr. Mai He, a pathologist at Washington University in St. Louis who was involved in the Wuhan study published in 2020, said there was still a lack of faith in the integrity of China's numbers.

"The persistent critical issue is a lack of transparency; people cannot use their data to do research and analysis, (or) provide guidance for the next step," he told Reuters.

The lack of trust in China's statistics is also causing panic among members of the public, said Victoria Fan, senior fellow in global health at the Center for Global Development.

"It's in the best interest of the government to be more transparent, because a lot of the behaviors that the public is exhibiting because they don't have information," she said.

NDTV
 
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged people to start wearing masks again as the country steps up surveillance of Covid cases.

Mr Modi held a review meeting on Thursday amid a surge in cases in China which has put India on alert.

The prime minister called for increased testing and encouraged a return to Covid-appropriate behaviour.

India had relaxed its Covid rules, including mask-wearing, earlier this year after a drop in infection levels.

The country witnessed two deadly waves in 2020 and 2022 - and the government had come under heavy criticism for its handling of the second wave in the summer of 2021 when thousands died amid a lack of oxygen supplies and critical medicines.

At Thursday's meeting, Mr Modi asked states to ensure operational readiness of hospital infrastructure, including a healthy supply of oxygen cylinders and ventilators.

While there was no reason to panic, the prime minister cautioned against complacency and urged citizens to take all necessary precautions.

According to government data, India currently has only around 3,400 active coronavirus cases, but reports of the surge in China have created a sense of fear among many people.

Over the past few months, India has reported four Covid-19 cases caused by BF.7, the Omicron subvariant linked to a spike in cases in China.

The cases - three in Gujarat state and one in Odisha - were detected in July, September and November and the patients have recovered, health officials have said.

Several experts have said that India does not have reason to panic.

In Delhi, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has assured the people that no case of the Covid variant has been detected in national capital.

In the southern state of Karnataka, the government has made Covid tests mandatory for flu-like symptoms and said masks may soon be mandatory in closed spaces.

Top health officials have asked people to get vaccinated and take booster doses. Over 2.2 billion Covid vaccine doses have been administered so far in the country, but only 27% of the population have taken the booster dose - which India calls a "precaution dose" - so far.

The government said it had no plans yet to stop flights from countries where new cases were reported. But the country has resumed random testing of international travellers at the airports.

On Thursday, India's health minister Mansukh Mandaviya said in parliament that though cases in China were rising, those in India were "depleting". He added that the ministry was closely monitoring new variants and advised states to increase genome sequencing.

On Twitter, the government also debunked a fake message circulating on WhatsApp regarding a subvariant of the Omicron strain.

BBC
 
Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with Covid-19 on a single day this week, according to estimates from the government's top health authority, making the country's outbreak by far the world's largest.
As many as 248 million people, or nearly 18% of the population, likely contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December, according to minutes from an internal meeting of China's National Health Commission held on Wednesday, confirmed with people involved in the discussions. If accurate, the infection rate would dwarf the previous daily record of about 4 million, set in January 2022.

Beijing's swift dismantling of Covid Zerorestrictions has led to the unfettered spread of the highly contagious omicron variants in a population with low levels of natural immunity. More than half the residents of Sichuan province, in China's southwest, and the capital Beijing have been infected, according to the agency's estimates.

How the Chinese health regulator came up with its estimate is unclear, as the country shut down its once ubiquitous network of PCR testingbooths earlier this month. Precise infection rates have been difficult to establish in other countries during the pandemic, as hard-to-get laboratory tests were supplanted by home testing with results that weren't centrally collected.

The NHC didn't respond to a request for comment faxed by Bloomberg News. The commission's newly founded National Disease Control Bureau, which overseas the Covid response, also didn't respond to phone calls and faxes on Friday.

People in China are now using rapid antigen tests to detect infections, and they aren't obligated to report positive results. Meanwhile, the government has stopped publishing the daily number of asymptomatic cases.

Chen Qin, chief economist at data consultancy MetroDataTech, forecasts China's current wave will peak between mid-December and late January in most cities, based on an analysis of online keyword searches. His model suggests the reopening surge is already responsible for tens of millions of infections daily, with the largest case counts in the cities of Shenzhen, Shanghai and Chongqing.

Missing Deaths

The minutes of the meeting didn't note discussion on how many people have died. They did cite Ma Xiaowei, the head of the NHC, reiterating the new, much narrower definition used to count Covid fatalities. While acknowledging that deaths will inevitably occur as the virus spreads rapidly, he underscored that only people who die from Covid-induced pneumonia should be included in the mortality statistics.

Officials said Beijing - which was hit first - is starting to see severe and critical Covid casespeak even as its overall infection rate is waning. Meanwhile, the outbreak is spreading from urban centers to rural China, where medical resources are often lacking. The agency warned every region to prepare for the coming surge in severe disease.

The 37 million daily cases estimated for December 20 is a dramatic deviation from the official tally of just 3,049 infections reported in China for that day. It is also several times higher than the previous world record for the pandemic. Global cases hit an all-time high of 4 million on Jan. 19, 2022, amid an initial wave of omicron infections following its emergence in South Africa, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The scale of infection suggested by the official estimates underscores the challenge China faces after it abruptly pivoted from the Covid Zero regime that largely kept the virus at bay for the past three years. Hospitals in major Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai have been overwhelmed with a sudden surge in patients, while crematoriums struggle to handle the onslaught of deaths
 
Crematoriums In China Fill Up Amid Rise In Covid Cases: Report

As COVID-19 cases continue to rise at a meteoric pace in China, crematoriums throughout the country are getting packed and people are forced to wait for hours to get their loved ones cremated, American broadcaster CNN reported.

Social media posts have described the frustration faced by many people in trying to find a hearse and the difficulty of occupying a slot for cremation at a funeral home, the report added.

It further added China's state media is deliberately ignoring scenes of crowded hospital wards and packed crematoriums. Chinese officials have said that only a few people are dying due to COVID-19 as per the government's own tally.

An unverified user on Twitter who goes by the name Byron Wan claimed, "Beiqing Community Newspaper Tongzhou Edition reported on Dec 22 that a funeral home/crematory in Tongzhou has been operating at maximum capacity, currently cremating 140-150 bodies per day, up from 40 before!"

As per the CNN report, a major crematorium in Beijing was fully packed, with a long queue of cars outside the cremation area waiting to get in. Smoke constantly billowed from the furnaces and yellow body bags were piling up inside metal containers. Grieving families waiting in queue held photographs of the victims.

Some people said they had been waiting for more than a day to cremate their loved ones, who died after getting infected with COVID-19. One man told CNN that the hospital where his friend passed away was too full to keep the body and his friend was kept on the floor of the hospital.

In the nearby shops selling funerary items, a florist said that she was running out of stock. Citing social media footage, the report said that crematoriums in many parts of China are struggling to keep up with an influx of bodies.

Facing growing scepticism that it is downplaying COVID deaths, the Chinese government defended the accuracy of its official tally by revealing it had updated its method of counting fatalities caused by the virus, CNN reported.

According to the latest guidelines from the National Health Commission, only those whose death is caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after getting infected with COVID-19 are considered as Covid deaths, said Wang Guiqiang, a top infectious disease doctor.

Wang Guiqiang said those deemed to have died due to another disease or underlying condition, such as heart attack, will not be counted as a virus death, even if they were infected with COVID-19 at the time, reported CNN.

Explaining China's criteria for counting Covid deaths on Wednesday, the World Health Organization's emergency chief Michael Ryan said the definition was 'quite narrow'.

"People who die of COVID die from many different (organ) systems' failures, given the severity of infection," Ryan said, adding, "So limiting a diagnosis of death from Covid to someone with a Covid positive test and respiratory failure will very much underestimate the true death count associated with Covid."

According to Wang, the Chinese doctor, the definition change was necessitated by Omicron's mild nature, which is different from the Wuhan strain which was witnessed at the initial stage of the pandemic, when most patients died from pneumonia and respiratory failure.

Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, pointed out that this is more or less the same strict criteria, as per the news report. According to Jin, the definition was only broadened in April this year to include some COVID patients, who died of underlying conditions during the Shanghai lockdown.

NDTV
 
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) on Monday conducted a review of the prevailing coronavirus situation with a particular focus on “evolving Covid variants” and directed the National Institute of Health (NIH) to review the stocks of vaccines and arrangements in hospitals to deal with virus cases.

According to CBS News, China is experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases due to a strain that is a sub-variant of the highly infectious Omicron variant: BF.7 or BA.5.2.1.7.

NDMA Chairman Lt Gen Inam Haider Malik presided a special session of the National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC) today that focused on “evolving Covid variants and expressed confidence in Pakistan’s current strategies and national preparedness”.

DAWN
 
The immediate effect will be on neighbouring countries. First time around it all started from China too. We should all be mega concerned of being locked up again:facepalm
 
China will scrap quarantine for travellers from 8 January, officials said, marking the last major shift from the country's zero-Covid policy.

After almost three years of closed borders, this will reopen the country to those with work and study visas, or seeking to visit family.

Chinese citizens will also be able to travel overseas, the immigration authority said on Tuesday.

Covid has spread ferociously in the wake of restrictions being lifted.

Reports say hospitals are overwhelmed and elderly people are dying.

BBC
 
Chinese Public Shows Mixed Emotions About Covid Zero Ending

China's public has mixed emotions about Covid Zero coming to a sudden end, with some people expressing relief and planning their first trips abroad in three years while others worry about the spread of infections.

"We have lost far too much in these few years with the pandemic," one person wrote on the Twitter-like Weibo, where the government's plan to stop subjecting inbound travelers to quarantine from Jan. 8 was a top trending topic on Tuesday.

"Wish everyone a speedy recovery, and hope that we can all breathe freely and go to anywhere we want freely," the person added.

That desire for a quick return to normal life contrasted with concerns about overwhelmed hospitals, which have already come under strain in Beijing and Shanghai. "Domestic infections are still rising," one Weibo user wrote. "Isn't it obviously trying to get everyone infected," the person asked, referring indirectly to the government.

Another internet user wrote about a neighbor who died and a rumor that coffins were in short supply. "This is the result of opening up," the person wrote. "Why must we open up? Why can't we consider the vulnerable groups first?"

The divided views are understandable given the propaganda the Chinese government has used since 2020 to defend its harsh zero-tolerance approach to containing Covid-19, including snap lockdowns, frequent mass testing and largely closed borders. Chinese President Xi Jinping repeatedly defended the strategy despite the mounting economic costs, including as late as mid-October.

The restrictions became too much for many urbanites to bear in late November, when protests erupted in dozens of cities - the most widespread unrest the Asian nation has seen in decades. On Dec. 7, China took a decisive step toward living with the virus, including no longer forcing infected people into centralized quarantine camps.

The changes the National Health Commission announced Monday go further, opening the door to visa applications for foreigners and the resumption of outbound tourism, which dwindled to almost nothing during the pandemic.

There's signs the quick U-turn has baffled the public. "One month ago we were still saying we'd stick to Covid Zero and put people first, yet one month later we are completely 'lying flat' and letting it go," wrote one Weibo user, using a Chinese term for slacking.

"Right, that's called optimization," the person added, playing on how the government has said it is only tweaking its policy.

NDTV
 
The US is considering imposing new Covid restrictions on Chinese arrivals, after Beijing announced it would reopen its borders next month.

American officials say this is due to a lack of transparency surrounding the virus in China, as cases surge.

Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan have already outlined tighter measures for Chinese travellers, including negative test results.

Beijing has said Covid rules should be brought in on a "scientific" basis.

India is also stepping up measures on Chinese arrivals, but this was announced before Beijing said it would relax its strict border policy.

Passport applications for Chinese citizens wishing to travel internationally will resume from 8 January, the country's immigration authorities have said.

Travel sites have reported a spike in traffic, leaving some countries fearful over the potential spread of Covid.

BBC
 
MenInG said:
The US is considering imposing new Covid restrictions on Chinese arrivals, after Beijing announced it would reopen its borders next month.

American officials say this is due to a lack of transparency surrounding the virus in China, as cases surge.

Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan have already outlined tighter measures for Chinese travellers, including negative test results.

Beijing has said Covid rules should be brought in on a "scientific" basis.

India is also stepping up measures on Chinese arrivals, but this was announced before Beijing said it would relax its strict border policy.

Passport applications for Chinese citizens wishing to travel internationally will resume from 8 January, the country's immigration authorities have said.

Travel sites have reported a spike in traffic, leaving some countries fearful over the potential spread of Covid.

BBC
Click to expand...

<b>Covid in China: Countries tighten rules as tourism set to resume</b>

The US has become the latest country to impose mandatory Covid tests on Chinese tourists, after China announced it would reopen its borders next week.

Tighter measures have also been brought in by Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and India.

After almost three years of restrictions, China will let people travel more easily from 8 January.

At the same time, the country is facing a surge in Covid cases, leading to wariness among some countries.

However, Beijing said coronavirus rules should be brought in on a "scientific" basis, and accused some countries and media of "hyping up" the situation.

On Monday and Tuesday, China announced it would ease its restrictions on travel to and from the country.

From 8 January, quarantine for travellers entering China will end, and passport applications for Chinese citizens will resume, authorities said.

Travel sites reported a spike in traffic following the announcements - and some countries revised their travel rules.

The US said that from 5 January all passengers travelling from China, Hong Kong and Macau would need a negative Covid test to enter the country in order to "slow the spread" of the virus.

A US department of health statement said air passengers would need to take a Covid test no more than two days before departure.

It added that those who tested positive more than 10 days before the flight could provide documentation of recovery from Covid instead of a negative test result.

The measures applied to people flying via a third country and to passengers taking connecting flights through the US to other destinations, it said.

It said it would "continue to monitor the situation" and adjust its approach "as necessary".

It also accused China of failing to provide "adequate and transparent" Covid data, which it said was "critical" for monitoring infection surges "effectively" as well as decreasing the chances of new variants emerging.

Earlier, Wang Wenbin, China's foreign minister spokesman, accused Western countries and media of "hyping up" and "distorting China's Covid policy adjustments".

He said China believed all countries' Covid responses should be "science-based and proportionate", and should "not affect normal people-to-people exchange".

Mr Wang called for "joint efforts to ensure safe cross-border travel, maintain stability of global industrial supply chains and promote economic recovery and growth".

Italy - once the global epicentre of the virus after it spread from China in late 2019 and 2020 - also said it was bringing in mandatory Covid testing for all passengers coming from China.

Health Minister Orazio Schillaci said this was "essential to ensure the surveillance and identification" of any new variants of the virus, and to "protect the Italian population".

Before his announcement, flights arriving in Milan were already testing passengers flying from China.

On one flight, which landed at the city's Malpensa Airport on 26 December, 52% of passengers were found to be positive for Covid, la Repubblica reports.


Other countries had already imposed some restrictions on travellers coming from China:

• In Japan, from Friday all travellers from China and those who visited it within seven days will be tested for Covid upon arrival, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said. Those who test positive will be required to quarantine for seven days if they have symptoms, or five days if asymptomatic. The number of flights to and from China will also be restricted

• In India, people travelling from China and four other Asian countries must produce a negative Covid test before arriving. Passengers will be put in quarantine if they have symptoms or test positive

• Taiwan says people arriving on flights from China, as well as by boat at two islands, will have to take Covid tests on arrival from 1 January to 31 January. Those who test positive will be able to isolate at home, Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Centre said


Malaysia has also put additional tracking and surveillance measures in place

The UK and Germany each said they were monitoring the situation closely, but were not considering new restrictions for Chinese travellers.

In Belgium, the mayor of tourist hub Bruges called for Chinese visitors to face Covid tests or mandatory vaccine requirements.

The true toll of daily cases and deaths in China is unknown because officials have stopped releasing the data. Reports say hospitals are overwhelmed and elderly people are dying.

Last week, Beijing reported about 4,000 new Covid infections each day and few deaths.
Despite the rise in infections, China has continued its programme of loosening its strict Covid measures.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong announced it was scrapping the last of its Covid rules - apart from the wearing of face masks, which remains compulsory.
 
The EU's disease agency has said the screening of travellers from China for Covid-19 would be "unjustified".

On Thursday, Italy urged the rest of the EU to follow its lead and ensure Chinese arrivals were tested, and quarantined if necessary.

The US, Japan, Taiwan and India also recently announced mandatory testing, as China deals with a Covid surge.

But the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said the surge was "not expected to impact" the EU.

In a statement, the ECDC said:

High levels of Covid in China are anticipated given the country's low immunity and recent relaxation of its rules
But higher immunity in the EU means a Covid surge in China is not expected to impact the bloc
The Covid-19 variants circulating in China are already circulating in the EU
Potential imported infections from China are "rather low" compared to the number of infections already occurring in the EU
And citizens in the bloc have relatively high vaccination and immunisation
Concerns were raised after Chinese authorities decided to let people travel more freely from 8 January, after almost three years of largely-closed borders.

EU health officials held talks in Brussels on Thursday to co-ordinate any response. The ECDC added: "We remain vigilant and will be ready to use the emergency brake if necessary."

The EU can issue recommendations, but each nation is free to make their own policies, like Italy.

BBC
 
<b>Covid in China: Checks on visitors under review - UK defence minister</b>

The UK government is reviewing whether to introduce Covid restrictions on visitors from China, the defence secretary has said.

Ben Wallace said the Department for Transport would take medical advice and talk to the Department of Health.

Earlier, an ex-health minister urged the government to consider testing arrivals from China for Covid.

A number of countries are introducing mandatory testing in response to China's coronavirus surge.

Asked whether the government would consider restrictions, Mr Wallace said:

"The government is looking at that, it's under review, we noticed obviously what the US has done and India and I think Italy has looked at it."

"We keep under review all the time, obviously, health threats to the UK, wherever they may be."

Several countries - including the US, Japan and Italy - are now enforcing testing on visitors from China.

This follows a surge in cases in China after Beijing's decision to effectively end its zero-Covid policy.

UK Health Minister Will Quince said he knew that many people would be concerned "about the news coming out of China" and the government was taking the situation "incredibly seriously".

However, there was "no evidence at this point of a new variant from China", which he said would be the "key threat".

"At the moment the variant that is in China currently is already prevalent here in the UK."

Meanwhile, the Scottish government said it currently has no plans to change travel requirements, and would continue to work with the UK Health Security Agency and other countries to "monitor the spread of harmful variants".

Lord Bethell, who was health minister during the pandemic, told the BBC there was a good reason to look at testing people when they land, a policy Italy has adopted.

"What the Italians are doing is post-flight surveillance of arrivals in Italy, in order to understand whether there are any emerging variants and to understand the impact of the virus on the Italian health system," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"That is a sensible thing to do and something the British government should be seriously looking at."

China is reporting about 5,000 cases a day, but analysts say such numbers are vastly undercounted - and the daily caseload may be closer to one million.

Prof Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said he did not think the current situation in China was likely to generate many more Covid cases in the UK or generally across the globe.

While China was in a "dark" and "difficult" place, the current evidence suggested the particular variant causing most infections in the country was "very common elsewhere in the world", he told BBC Radio 4's PM programme on Wednesday.

The UK has seen many such cases since it appeared in the summer, he added.

On Wednesday, the US said a lack of "adequate and transparent" Covid data in China had contributed to the decision to require Covid tests from 5 January for travellers entering the country from China, Hong Kong and Macau.

On Thursday, Italy urged the rest of the EU to follow its lead and ensure Chinese arrivals were tested.

However, the EU's disease agency said the surge in cases in China was not expected to impact members states and said screening travellers from China for Covid would be "unjustified".

Beijing's foreign ministry has said coronavirus rules should only be put in place on a "scientific" basis and accused Western countries and media of "hyping up" the situation.

China only announced on Monday its decision to end quarantine for arrivals - effectively reopening travel in and out of the country for the first time since March 2020.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64116416
 
China Covid: experts estimate 9,000 deaths a day as US says it may sample wastewater from planes
Infectious disease experts believe strategy more effective in slowing virus spread than new travel restrictions, as health data firm says thousands are likely dying daily in China

The United States is considering sampling wastewater taken from international aircraft to track any emerging new Covid-19 variants as infections surge in China, as UK-based health experts estimate about 9,000 people a days are now dying of the disease in China.

The proposed of testing wastewater by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would provide a better solution to tracking the virus and slowing its entry into the US than new travel restrictions announced this week, three infectious disease experts said.

The US and a number of other countries have said travellers from China will require mandatory negative Covid tests
...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-us-says-it-may-sample-wastewater-from-planes
 
The UK is set to announce that passengers coming from China will have to provide a negative Covid test before they travel to Britain.

The UK has become the latest nation to bring in screening for travellers from China after cases surged following Beijing's decision to relax its zero-Covid policy.

China has said it will fully reopen its borders on 8 January.

Several countries, including the US and India, are also bringing in testing.

It is understood the UK will demand a negative test before travellers can board a flight from mainland China - bringing Britain into line with the approach taken by the US.

While the announcement has not yet been formally made, the UK defence secretary confirmed on Friday that the government was reviewing the need for testing for passengers from China.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64130655
 
MenInG said:
The UK is set to announce that passengers coming from China will have to provide a negative Covid test before they travel to Britain.

The UK has become the latest nation to bring in screening for travellers from China after cases surged following Beijing's decision to relax its zero-Covid policy.

China has said it will fully reopen its borders on 8 January.

Several countries, including the US and India, are also bringing in testing.

It is understood the UK will demand a negative test before travellers can board a flight from mainland China - bringing Britain into line with the approach taken by the US.

While the announcement has not yet been formally made, the UK defence secretary confirmed on Friday that the government was reviewing the need for testing for passengers from China.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64130655
Click to expand...


<b>China Covid: England to require negative test for arrivals</b>

Passengers arriving in England from China will have to provide a negative Covid test before they board a flight, ministers have confirmed.

It comes as several nations announced they would be screening travellers from China after cases surged following Beijing's decision to relax its zero-Covid policy.

China has said it will fully reopen its borders on 8 January.

Several countries, including the US, France and India, have imposed testing.

The Department of Health and Social Care said people travelling from China on direct flights from 5 January will be asked to take a pre-departure Covid test.

From 8 January, the UK Health Security Agency will also launch surveillance, which will see a sample of passengers arriving from China tested for the virus as they arrive.

Read at:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64130655
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Chinese officials must share more real-time information on Covid in the country as infections surge, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

Many of the country's strict restrictions have been lifted over the last few weeks, but cases have soared and several countries are now screening travellers from China.

WHO officials say they want to see more data on hospitalisations, intensive care unit admissions and deaths.

It also wants figures on vaccinations.

The United States, Spain, France, South Korea, India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan have all imposed Covid tests for travellers from China, as they fear a renewed spread of the virus.

And passengers arriving in England from China will have to provide a negative test before they board a flight.

BBC
 
<b>Australia, Canada and Morocco latest countries to impose restrictions on travellers from China amid surge in COVID-19 cases</b>

More than a dozen countries and territories have imposed restrictions on travellers from China amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, with Australia and Canada requiring negative test results for all passengers from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao.

The latest curbs were announced on Sunday as COVID-19 overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes across China.

Global health experts say the virus that causes COVID-19 is likely infecting millions of people a day after Beijing dismantled its “zero-COVID” policy of strict lockdowns and mass testing last month.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/1/australia-canada-impose-covid-curbs-on-travellers-from-china
 
James said:
<b>Australia, Canada and Morocco latest countries to impose restrictions on travellers from China amid surge in COVID-19 cases</b>

More than a dozen countries and territories have imposed restrictions on travellers from China amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, with Australia and Canada requiring negative test results for all passengers from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao.

The latest curbs were announced on Sunday as COVID-19 overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes across China.

Global health experts say the virus that causes COVID-19 is likely infecting millions of people a day after Beijing dismantled its “zero-COVID” policy of strict lockdowns and mass testing last month.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/1/australia-canada-impose-covid-curbs-on-travellers-from-china
Click to expand...

Are we going to have more lockdowns and other restrictions worldwide? I hope not. World is still recovering.
 
This reminds me that Imran Khan had a very good policy of not imposing too many restrictions in Pakistan because the country couldn't afford it. Sometimes being forced into not relying on medical quick fixes can be better in the long term.
 
sweep_shot said:
Are we going to have more lockdowns and other restrictions worldwide? I hope not. World is still recovering.
Click to expand...

doubt any lockdowns will happen now. What we are seeing in China is a result of strict lockdowns and extreme restrictions.
 
"Entry Restrictions Targeting Only Chinese Travellers": Beijing Hits Out
"Some countries have taken entry restrictions targeting only Chinese travellers," China's foreign ministry spokesperson said.

China on Tuesday condemned fresh Covid test requirements by around a dozen countries on passengers travelling abroad from its territory, warning it could take "countermeasures" in response.
The United States, Canada, France and Japan are among a number of countries that now require travellers from China to show a negative Covid test before arrival, as the country faces a surge in cases.

"Some countries have taken entry restrictions targeting only Chinese travellers," foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular briefing.

"This lacks scientific basis and some practices are unacceptable," she added, warning China could "take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity".

...
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/cor...s-agency-afp-3659590#pfrom=home-ndtv_bigstory
 
daytrader said:
"Entry Restrictions Targeting Only Chinese Travellers": Beijing Hits Out
"Some countries have taken entry restrictions targeting only Chinese travellers," China's foreign ministry spokesperson said.

China on Tuesday condemned fresh Covid test requirements by around a dozen countries on passengers travelling abroad from its territory, warning it could take "countermeasures" in response.
The United States, Canada, France and Japan are among a number of countries that now require travellers from China to show a negative Covid test before arrival, as the country faces a surge in cases.

"Some countries have taken entry restrictions targeting only Chinese travellers," foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular briefing.

"This lacks scientific basis and some practices are unacceptable," she added, warning China could "take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity".

...
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/cor...s-agency-afp-3659590#pfrom=home-ndtv_bigstory
Click to expand...

Better to stop flights from China for January. Chinese spokesperson needs to give answers on why their government restricted so many citizens in buildings if the situation within China is not serious with new variants. China shares responsibility for lot of economic misery the world has gone through since 2020. While they can shut down their citizens efficiently, it is important other nations adopt preventive measures when dealing with them.
 
The Sindh Health Department on Tuesday confirmed the presence of XBB and XBB-1 sub-variants of the Omicron variant in Karachi, ARY News reported.

Karachi has detected six cases of the new Covid-19 variant, XBB and XBB-1, the health department said in a statement.

However, they confirmed that the South Asian country was still safe from the highly infectious variant – BF.
 
What is XBB.1.5?

It is yet another offshoot of the globally dominant Omicron Covid variant, which itself followed the earlier alpha, beta, gamma and delta variants.

Omicron has outperformed all previous versions of coronavirus since it emerged in late 2021, and has given rise to many sub-variants which are even more contagious than the original.

Symptoms of XBB.1.5 are thought to be similar to those of previous Omicron strains, but it's still too early to confirm this. Most people experience cold-like symptoms.

Is XBB.1.5 more infectious or dangerous than earlier variants?

XBB.1.5 itself evolved from XBB, which began circulating in the UK in September 2022, but which has not been classified as a so-called "variant of concern" by health authorities.

XBB had a mutation that helped it beat the body's immune defences, but this same quality also reduced its ability to infect human cells.

Prof Wendy Barclay from Imperial College London said XBB.1.5 had a mutation known as F486P, which restores this ability to bind to cells while continuing to evade immunity. That makes it spread more easily.

She said these evolutionary changes were like "stepping stones", as the virus evolves to find new ways of bypassing the body's self-defence mechanisms.

Scientists from the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed on Wednesday that XBB.1.5 has a "growth advantage" above all other sub-variants seen so far.

But they said there was no indication it was more serious or harmful than previous Omicron variants.

The WHO said it would keep a close watch on lab studies, hospital data and infection rates to find out more about its impact on patients.

Where is XBB.1.5 spreading?

Over 40% of Covid cases in the United States are estimated to be caused by XBB.1.5, making it the dominant strain in the country.

At the beginning of December, it accounted for only 4% of cases so it has quickly overtaken other versions of Omicron.

Covid hospital admissions have been rising in recent weeks across the US.

US brings back free at-home Covid tests
The UK Health Security Agency is due to release a report on variants spreading in the UK next week, and may refer to XBB.1.5.

Could the XBB.1.5 variant take off in the UK?

Nothing is certain, but it does look likely.

The UK had five Omicron waves in 2022, and further spikes in cases are inevitable.

Figures for the week to Saturday 17 December from the Sanger Institute in Cambridge suggested that one in 25 Covid cases in the UK were XBB.1.5.

But that was based on just nine samples, so we'll need to wait for a week or two to get a better picture of how it is spreading.

Prof Barclay said she expected more hospitalisations in the UK if the variant takes off here, "as we expect it to do".

Prof Paul Hunter from the University of East Anglia, said: "The balance of probabilities is that XBB.1.5 will trigger a wave here later this month, but we can't be sure."

NHS England has said the fears of a "twindemic" of Covid and flu have been realised, with both viruses putting strain on an already stretched NHS.

Are scientists worried about XBB.1.5?

Prof Barclay said she was not especially concerned about the general UK population because there was "no indication" that XBB.1.5 would "breakthrough" the protection against severe illness provided by vaccines.

But she is worried about its effect on the vulnerable, including the immunocompromised, who get less benefit from Covid jabs.

Prof Hunter said he'd seen no evidence that XBB.1.5 was more virulent, meaning it was no more likely to "put you in hospital or kill you" than existing Omicron variants.

He added: "It's ironic that everyone is focussing on possible variants emerging from China, but XBB.1.5 came out of the US."

Prof David Heymann from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine acknowledged that there was still a fair amount to learn about this latest variant.

But he said it was unlikely to cause major problems in countries like the UK which have high levels of vaccination and previous infections.

His concern was for countries like China, where there was both low take-up of vaccines and little natural immunity because of prolonged lockdowns.

BBC
 
<b>The growing number of Chinese public figures whose deaths are being made public is prompting people to question the official Covid death toll.</b>

The death of Chu Lanlan, a 40-year-old opera singer, last month came as a shock to many, given how young she was.

Her family said they were saddened by her "abrupt departure", but did not give details of the cause of her death.

China scrapped its strict zero-Covid policy in December and has seen a rapid surge of infections and deaths.

There are reports of hospitals and crematoria becoming overwhelmed.

But the country has stopped publishing daily cases data, and has announced only 22 Covid deaths since December, using its own strict criteria.

Now only those who die from respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia are counted.

On Wednesday the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that China was under-representing the true impact of Covid in the country - in particular deaths.

But the deaths of Chu Lanlan and others is sparking speculation about greater losses than those reported on official accounts.

According to the specialist news website Operawire, Chu Lanlan was a soprano who specialised in Peking Opera - a theatrical art in which performers use speech, song, dance and combat movements to tell stories - and was also involved in charitable causes.

On New Year's Day news of the death of actor Gong Jintang devastated many Chinese internet users.

According to a tally by Chinese media, 16 scientists from the country's top science and engineering academies died between 21 and 26 December.

None of these deaths were linked to Covid in their obituaries, but that hasn't prevented speculation online.

The Chinese authorities are aware of the widespread scepticism although they continue to play down the severity of this wave of Covid sweeping the country.

In an interview with state TV, the director of Beijing's Institute of Respiratory Diseases admitted the number of deaths of elderly people so far this winter was "definitely more" than in past years, while also stressing that critical cases remained a minority of the overall number of Covid cases.

This week the People's Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper, urged citizens to work towards a "final victory" over Covid and dismissed criticism of the previous zero-Covid policy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-64173824
 
<b>China has taken down more than 1,000 social media accounts - some with millions of followers - that criticised the government's Covid policies.</b>

Social media platform Weibo said it had suspended or banned accounts for what it described as personal attacks against Chinese Covid specialists.

Weibo did not specify which posts had prompted the action.

China scrapped its strict zero-Covid policy in December and has seen a rapid surge of infections and deaths.

Online criticism has until recently largely focused on the strict enforcement of Covid regulations, including lockdowns that required people to stay at home in isolation for weeks.

But recent posts have taken aim at experts who have defended the sudden decision to drop restrictions, despite supporting them just weeks ago.

Weibo said it had spotted almost 13,000 violations, including attacks on experts, scholars and medical workers.

Temporary or permanent bans have been handed to 1,120 accounts.

"It is not acceptable to hurl insults at people who hold a different point of view, or publish personal attacks and views that incite conflicts," Weibo said in a statement.

Any kind of move that is destructive to the [Weibo] community would be handled in a serious manner."

Since China abandoned key parts of zero-Covid following historic protests against the policy, there have been reports of hospitals and crematoriums being overwhelmed.

But China has stopped publishing daily cases data and has announced only 22 Covid deaths since December, using its own strict criteria.

On Saturday, China marked the first day of the 40-day period of Lunar New Year, known as the world's largest annual migration of people.

The Ministry of Transport said it expects more than two billion passengers to travel over the next 40 days, an increase of 99.5% year-on-year and reaching 70% of trip numbers in 2019.

This has led to widespread concerns that the festival may see another wave of infections, especially in rural areas that are less well-equipped with ICU beds and ventilators.

From Sunday, China will drop a requirement for travellers coming from abroad to quarantine, meaning many Chinese will be able to travel abroad for the first time in almost three years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-64198313
 
Excitement as China opens borders to quarantine-free travel
China lifts quarantine rules for inbound travellers, ending nearly three years of self-imposed isolation.

China has lifted pandemic restrictions on foreign travel, ending quarantine requirements for inbound travellers and with it, nearly three years of self-imposed isolation.

The first passengers to arrive under the new rules landed at airports in the southern cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen just after midnight on Sunday, according to the state-owned China Global Television Network (CGTN).

The 387 passengers on board flights from Singapore and Canada’s Toronto were not subject to COVID-19 tests on arrival and did not have to undergo five days of quarantine at centralised government facilities, it reported.

...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/8/china-reopens-borders-to-quarantine-free-travel
 
90% of people in China province infected with Covid, says local health official
Data from the health commission for central Henan suggests 88 million people in the province may have had the virus

Almost 90% of people in China’s third most populous province have now been infected with Covid-19, a top local official has said, as the country battles an unprecedented surge in cases.

Kan Quancheng, director of the health commission for central Henan province, told a press conference that “as of January 6, 2023, the province’s Covid infection rate is 89%”.

With a population of 99.4 million, the figures suggest about 88.5 million people in Henan may now have been infected.

...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ters-new-phase-in-covid-fight-as-borders-open
 
WHO Calls For More Covid Data From China After 60,000 Deaths In A Month

The World Health Organization on Saturday called on China to provide more data on its Covid situation, after Beijing reported almost 60,000 Covid-related deaths there in just over a month.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the request in a conversation with Ma Xiaowei, director of China's National Health Commission, said a statement from the organisation.

"Dr Tedros also reiterated the importance of China's deeper cooperation and transparency," said the statement.

The Chinese government has been widely accused of underreporting the number of coronavirus fatalities since the abandonment of its zero-Covid policy.

Only a few dozen deaths had been recorded officially in December before Saturday's announcement, despite evidence of crematoriums and hospitals being overrun.

But a National Health Commission (NHC) official said Saturday that China had recorded 59,938 Covid-related deaths between December 8 and January 12.

The figure refers only to deaths at medical facilities, with the total number likely to be higher.

The World Health Organization, in its statement, said it is "analysing this information, which covers early December 2022 to 12 January 2023, and allows for a better understanding of the epidemiological situation and the impact of this wave in China.

"WHO requested that this type of detailed information continue to be shared with us and the public," the statement added.

"WHO notes the efforts by Chinese authorities to scale up clinical care for its population at all levels, including in critical care."

NDTV
 
‘Best thing that happened’: Chinese return home after years apart
Zero-COVID left many Chinese families – overseas and at home – separated for years. Now, they can finally reunite.

As Vicky Liu prepared to return home to China to celebrate the Lunar New Year with her family for the first time in more than three years, she wondered how much would have changed.

“The answer is a lot,” Liu, a 25-year-old postgraduate student in the United States who is from China’s northeastern city of Qingdao, told Al Jazeera.

In this period of time, two of her grandparents had died, two cousins had got married and a third cousin had become a mother. Liu’s parents had also bought a new house, her long-distance partner had moved from Qingdao to Shanghai and her family’s pet dog, Qiqi, had died.

Liu had not been there for any of it.

She left China in August 2019, a few months before the first cases of COVID-19 emerged in the central city of Wuhan.

...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023...appened-chinese-return-home-after-years-apart
 
Xi Jinping Concerned Over Covid Spike In China's Rural Areas: Report

Xi Jinping has said he is "concerned" about the virus situation in the Chinese countryside, state media reported, as millions of people head to rural hometowns ahead of upcoming Lunar New Year celebrations.

The Chinese leader also defended his zero-Covid policy -- lifted last month after crippling the economy and sparking nationwide protests -- saying it had been "the right choice".

In a series of calls Wednesday ahead of the holiday, the Chinese leader told local officials he worried about the situation in the country's rural hinterlands.

"Xi said he was primarily concerned about rural areas and rural residents after the country adjusted its Covid-19 response measures," state news agency Xinhua reported.

He "stressed efforts to improve medical care for those most vulnerable to the virus in rural areas," Xinhua said.

"Epidemic prevention and control has entered a new stage, and we are still in a period that requires great efforts," Xi was reported as saying, stressing the need to "address the shortcomings in epidemic prevention and control in rural areas".

Transport authorities have predicted that more than two billion trips will be made during a 40-day period between January and February -- nearly double last year's number and 70 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

State media reported that 30.2 million people travelled nationwide on Wednesday alone.

The enormous migration -- one of the world's largest -- is widely expected to bring a surge in virus cases to China's under-resourced countryside.

Beijing last month lifted a hardline virus policy that saw the state impose grueling lockdowns and mandatory mass testing, hammering China's economy and sending hundreds onto the streets in protests.

Xi defended that tough strategy on Wednesday, insisting zero-Covid had been "the right choice" and had allowed the country to fight "several rounds of outbreaks of virus mutations".

NDTV
 
China Says 80% Of Population Has Been Infected With Covid

The possibility of a big COVID-19 rebound in China over the next two or three months is remote as 80% of people have been infected, a prominent government scientist said on Saturday.

The mass movement of people during the ongoing Lunar New Year holiday period may spread the pandemic, boosting infections in some areas, but a second COVID wave is unlikely in the near term, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on the Weibo social media platform.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese are travelling across the country for holiday reunions that had been suspended under recently eased COVID curbs, raising fears of fresh outbreaks in rural areas less equipped to manage large outbreaks.

China has passed the peak of COVID patients in fever clinics, emergency rooms and with critical conditions, a National Health Commission official said on Thursday.

Nearly 60,000 people with COVID had died in hospital as of Jan. 12, roughly a month after China abruptly dismantled its zero-COVID policy, according to government data.

But some experts said that figure probably vastly undercounts the full impact, as it excludes those who die at home, and because many doctors have said they are discouraged from citing COVID as a cause of death.

NDTV
 
China reports nearly 13,000 Covid deaths over last week

China reported nearly 13,000 Covid-related deaths in hospitals between January 13 and 19, after a top health official said the vast majority of the population has already been infected by the virus.

China a week earlier said nearly 60,000 people had died with Covid in hospitals as of January 12, but there has been widespread scepticism over official data since Beijing abruptly axed anti-virus controls last month.

China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a statement on Saturday that 681 hospitalised patients had died of respiratory failure caused by coronavirus infection, and 11,977 had died of other diseases combined with infection over the period.

The figures do not include those who died from the virus at home.

Airfinity, an independent forecasting firm, has estimated daily Covid deaths in China will peak at around 36,000 over the Lunar New Year holiday.

...
https://www.dawn.com/news/1733044/china-reports-nearly-13000-covid-deaths-over-last-week
 
China claims Covid wave has peaked with severe cases, deaths falling fast
But reporting from inside China during the lunar new year period suggests rates of infection and fatalities exceeding official reports

China’s health authorities have said the Covid wave is past its peak, with rapid decline in both severe cases and deaths in hospitals, but experts remain wary of the government’s official data.

According to China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), the number of critically ill patients in hospital peaked in the first week of January, then rapidly declined by more than 70%. The number of deaths also reached its highest level that week, the data said.

Prof Chi Chun-huei, director of the centre for global health at Oregon University, said local officials were incentivised – via punishments and rewards – to under-report infection figures during the zero-Covid policy. Now that policy was gone, they were incentivised to exaggerate infection rates and under-report deaths.

“Most international experts know this very well – China’s statistics are very unreliable,” he said.

...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-peaked-with-severe-cases-deaths-falling-fast
 
Chinese health officials say the country's current wave of Covid-19 infections is "coming to an end".

The number of severe Covid cases and deaths is trending downward, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a report.

It also said there had been "no obvious rebound" during Lunar New Year holidays last week, where millions reunited for family gatherings.

There have long been questions raised about China's Covid reporting.

But experts say the decline reported now corresponds with the expected timing of an end to this major wave.

The virus tore through Chinese cities and towns after authorities lifted zero-Covid restrictions in December. However fever clinic visit rates have dropped over 90% through January and hospitalisation rates are down over 85%.

Fears that the virus could surge again during the festive period have also not yet been realised.

In its report, the CDC said: "There has not been an obvious rebound in Covid cases during the Lunar New Year holidays.

"In this time, no new variant has been discovered, and the country's current wave is coming to an end."
 
Wuhan welfare protests escalate as hundreds voice anger over health insurance cuts
Crowds of retirees gather in cities of Wuhan and Dalian to protest against cuts as local government coffers feel strain of years of Covid policies

Crowds of hundreds of older people took to the streets in the Chinese cities of Wuhan and Dalian on Wednesday in escalating protests against changes to the public health insurance system.

The protests were sparked by cuts to monthly allowances paid to retirees under China’s vast public health insurance system. The changes, gradually introduced since 2021, come as local government finances are strained following years of strict and costly zero-Covid policies.

On Wednesday, a crowd of demonstrators rallied in front of a park in the central Chinese city of Wuhan for the second time in a week. Video posted on social media showed security guards by the entrance to a popular scenic spot, Zhongshan park, forming a human chain to prevent more demonstrators from entering. Crowds pushed against officers, while some videos showed people singing the “Internationale”. The song, also an anthem of the Chinese Communist party, has been a feature of some recent protests and been used to accuse the party of straying from its origins.

...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ndreds-voice-anger-over-health-insurance-cuts
 
China declares 'decisive victory' over COVID-19
In December, China suddenly dismantled President Xi Jinping's signature zero-COVID policy following historic protests

China's top leaders declared a "decisive victory" over COVID-19, claiming the world's lowest fatality rate, although experts have questioned Beijing's data as the coronovirus tore across the country after largely being kept at bay for three years.

China abruptly ended its zero-COVID policy in early December, with 80% of its 1.4 billion population becoming infected, a prominent government scientist said last month.

Though there were widespread reports of packed hospital wards and mortuaries, China recorded only about 80,000 COVID deaths in hospitals in the two months after dropping its curbs.

Some experts say the actual toll was far higher, as many patients die at home and doctors were widely reported to have been discouraged from reporting COVID as a cause of death.

"With continuous efforts to optimise COVID-19 prevention and control measures since November 2022, China's COVID-19 response has made a smooth transition in a relatively short time," China's Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) said in a meeting on Thursday.

"A major decisive victory in epidemic prevention and control has been achieved," it said, adding that China's efforts led to more than 200 million people getting medical treatment, including nearly 800,000 severe cases.

...
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2401672/china-declares-decisive-victory-over-covid-19
 
China’s huge quarantine camps standing months after ‘zero COVID’
Satellite imagery shows facilities are still intact nearly four months after the end of Beijing’s draconian pandemic policy.

Nearly four months after China abruptly scrapped its tough “zero-COVID” policies following rare mass protests, authorities have yet to dismantle sprawling quarantine facilities designed for isolating hundreds of thousands of people, an Al Jazeera investigation based on satellite imagery shows.

Mass quarantine facilities in three Chinese provinces appear fully intact with no visible changes to their structure, an analysis of the satellite images shows, raising questions about the Chinese government’s post-pandemic plans for the now-defunct structures.

China’s quarantine facilities, which were previously used to isolate, and at times treat, positive COVID-19 cases and close contacts, became a symbol of the human cost of Beijing’s “zero-COVID” policy, which was dropped in December amid mounting public frustration with the draconian measures.

...
Al-Jazeera
 
COVID-19 infections in the UK have climbed to their highest level since the beginning of the year, final official estimates of the prevalence of the virus have revealed.

While the trend is uncertain in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, there are signs the virus is continuing to spread.

It marks the last time that regular estimates of COVID-19 are being published, as the long-running infection survey - dubbed "the envy of the world" due to its success in tracking the virus, has been halted.

The UK Health Security Agency said that any further monitoring of the virus will be announced after a review to ensure it is "cost-effective".

The data showed that in the week ending 13 March, an estimated 1.5 million people in private households in England were likely to have had coronavirus.

It is the highest total of COVID cases in England since the week to 3 January, when the total stood at around 2.2 million.

Due to a low number of samples received by the ONS there is greater uncertainty in the latest figures for Scotland and Wales, while too few samples were returned in Northern Ireland to produce a new estimate.

Around 136,200 people in Scotland were likely to have the virus in the week to 13 March, or around one in 40, compared with 105,100 or one in 50 the week before.

For Wales, the latest estimate is 74,500 COVID cases, or one in 40, compared with 68,200 or one in 45 the week prior.

SKY
 
China holds the key to understanding Covid-19 origins: WHO chief

The World Health Organisation chief pressed China on Thursday to share its information about the origins of Covid-19, saying that until that happened all hypotheses remained on the table, more than three years after the virus first emerged.

“Without full access to the information that China has, you cannot say this or that,” said Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in response to a question about the origin of the virus.

“All hypotheses are on the table. That’s WHO’s position and that’s why we have been asking China to be cooperative on this.”

“If they would do that then we will know what happened or how it started,” he said.

The virus was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, with many suspecting it spread in a live animal market before fanning out around the world and killing nearly 7 million people.

...
https://www.dawn.com/news/1746395/china-holds-the-key-to-understanding-covid-19-origins-who-chief
 
Share Covid data, World Health Organization tells China

The World Health Organization has urged China to share data on the origins of the Covid pandemic, five years on from its start in the city of Wuhan.

"This is a moral and scientific imperative," the WHO said in a statement to mark what it called the "milestone" anniversary.

"Without transparency, sharing, and co-operation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics," it added.

Many scientists think the virus transferred naturally from animals to humans, but some suspicions persist that it escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.

China has not responded to Monday's WHO statement. In the past it has strongly rejected the lab leak theory.

In September, a team of scientists said it was "beyond reasonable doubt" that the Covid pandemic started with infected animals sold at a market, rather than a laboratory leak.

They came to this conclusion after analysing hundreds of samples collected from Wuhan in January 2020.

In its statement, the WHO went back to the early days of Covid and traced its evolution from a local phenomenon to a global scourge, leading to lockdowns around the world and the ultimately successful race to develop vaccines.

"Five years ago on 31 December 2019, WHO's Country Office in China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of 'viral pneumonia' in Wuhan, China," the organisation said.

"In the weeks, months and years that unfolded after that, Covid-19 came to shape our lives and our world," it went on.

The WHO said it "went to work immediately" as 2020 dawned. It recalled how its employees activated emergency systems on 1 January and informed the world three days later.

"By 9-12 January, WHO had published its first set of comprehensive guidance for countries, and on 13 January, we brought together partners to publish the blueprint of the first Sars-CoV-2 laboratory test," it added.

The WHOsaid it wanted to "honour the lives changed and lost, recognise those who are suffering from Covid-19 and long Covid, express gratitude to the health workers who sacrificed so much to care for us, and commit to learning from Covid-19 to build a healthier tomorrow".

In May 2023, the WHO declared that Covid-19 no longer represented a "global health emergency".

Its director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at the time that at least seven million people had died in the pandemic.

But he added that the true figure was "likely" closer to 20 million deaths - nearly three times the official estimate.

Since then, the WHO has repeatedly warned against complacency about the possible emergence of future Covid-like illnesses.

Dr Ghebreyesus has said the next pandemic "can come at any moment" and has urged the world to be prepared.

BBC
 
Unique under Democrats WHO again became West biased, considering Trump is back wonder if it will become Chinese biased.

The thread title somewhat gave nightmares, got stunned
 
COVID-paranoid parents locked children indoors for over 3 years in Spain

In a shocking case out of Oviedo, Spain, three children were rescued from a secluded home after being kept indoors for over three years by their parents, who were consumed by paranoia over COVID-19.

The chilling situation came to light thanks to a vigilant neighbour who had been documenting the family’s unusual behaviour since they moved in during the height of the pandemic in 2021.

Known only as Silvia, the neighbour noticed troubling signs — the children’s window blinds were raised only briefly each day, only the father interacted with the outside world, and diaper deliveries continued despite the children being eight and ten years old. After years of silent observation, she finally contacted local police.

What investigators found was disturbing. The German couple — Christian Steffen (53) and his German-American wife Melissa Ann Steffen (48) — had isolated their children in extreme conditions, making them wear diapers, three face masks at a time, and pyjamas 24/7. The house was filled with dirty diapers, unused toilets, and up to six running ozone air purifiers.

Medical exams revealed that the children suffered from chronic constipation, as they were forced to relieve themselves in diapers rather than use the bathroom. The children — two 8-year-old twins and a 10-year-old — had reportedly not been outdoors in more than three years.


www.samaa.tv

COVID-fearing parents kept children indoors for 3 years in Spain

Three children were rescued from a "house of horrors" in Spain after their parents, fearing COVID-19
www.samaa.tv www.samaa.tv
 
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