the effect of the new system of counting the victims, announced on Tuesday evening by the National Health Commission. Everything you need to know about coronavirus infections in China
No one died of Covid-19 in China yesterday, according to Chinese authorities. the effect of the new body count system, announced on Tuesday evening by the National Health Commission: deaths of coronavirus-positive patients are recorded as Covid-19 deaths only if the end was caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure. The Chinese epidemiologist Wang Guiqiang told the press that in the majority of cases of those infected with previous pathologies, the coronavirus cannot be considered the cause of death.
This is why, although Beijing has been attacked by an unprecedented wave of infections for two weeks, no one was killed by Covid yesterday. In the death certificates, cardiac arrest or other diseases that block the functioning of vital organs are given as a reason. On December 7, the authorities suddenly withdrew from the Covid Zero trench
: lockdowns suddenly cancelled, mandatory quarantines for positives and their contacts, almost daily swabs. Last week the Central Health Commission stopped including asymptomatic or mild symptom positives in the number of infections: It is impossible to have reliable numbers, given that the obligation to swab for movements has ceased, explained the Beijing epidemiologists. Infection tracking has been abandoned and can now only rely on empirical and anecdotal data to assess the situation.
Beijing’s low traffic; the outbursts of the inhabitants who on social media claim that until two weeks ago they knew only a few people who had had Covid and now half of the people I hear have caught it; the authorities announcing the increase in intensive care beds; the sending of health personnel to fill the gaps left by those in turn infected in the ward; finally the testimonies collected among the funeral agencies which report an exceptional increase in the number of dead. Most countries in the world do not share China’s tracking system. Benjamin Mazer, a pathologist at Johns Hopkins University, says Chinese colleagues will lose count of a large number of cases of deaths from Covid-19, because it is not only pneumonia that kills those infected with the coronavirus. We now know that vaccines can protect against pneumonia, even the Chinese ones, but there are many complications caused by the Covid infection, the American Mazer explains to Reuters and mentions heart problems, thrombosis, in extreme cases sepsis. Exactly three years have passed since the first rumors, doubts and suspicions about a mysterious lung disease that emerged in Wuhan in December 2020.
In February 2020, the Wuhan epidemic became a pandemic: since then, almost 700 million infections and more than six million deaths have been recorded worldwide.. In total, China has counted 5,241 (five thousand two hundred and forty-one) deaths, almost all in the disastrous first three months of Wuhan between January and March 2020. In this surge after the sudden retreat from the Covid Zero front, 7 deaths were counted, all in Beijing. Yet, it has been calculated that 40% of Beijing’s 22 million inhabitants these days have been infected and alarming news is arriving from other cities and provinces. 90% of cases in this wave are asymptomatic, even in China, but such a low mortality among Chinese patients with symptoms seems implausible in the face of world statistics, which range between 2,400 and 3,000 deaths per million inhabitants. While China stops at 3 per million.
The case of mainland China is also surprising because Hong Kong has recorded about 11,000 deaths in these three years and declared 39 on Monday and 33 on Tuesday, out of a population of about 7.2 million inhabitants, a third of that of Beijing alone. Again, a climate of anxiety, recriminations and suspicions is spreading throughout the world and on Chinese social networks. International news agencies have reported queues of hearses in front of Beijing’s crematoria, deducing that the number of deaths in recent days significantly exceeds the statistics. Many Chinese then ask How is it possible that the dead are so few and they are all in Beijing? What happens in the rest of the Republic?. An official of a Chongqing funeral agency wrote on Weibo that 22 bodies are burned in his crematorium a day, compared to 4-5 in November. His post was immediately deleted, but the screenshot continues to circulate on the web. Similar stories, of coffins waiting in the corridors, of personnel in anti-contagion protective suits employed for transport, come from other provinces, from Hebei in the north to Guangdong in the south.
The spread of this wave in many provinces of China is proved by the fact that the authorities of Chongqing, a megalopolis of 30 million inhabitants considering its large hinterland, have invited asymptomatic or mildly unwell positives to return to work. On the other hand, millions of Chinese are preparing to leave for the Lunar New Year holidays (January 22) and it now seems futile and impossible to try to stop the circulation of the coronavirus as it was done up until a few weeks ago. It will be the surge caused in the provinces by the trips of migrant workers in early January and then the one reported in the cities upon their return after the Lunar New Year that will represent the ordeal by fire for China’s health system, experts say. Models made by various epidemiological research institutes in China and abroad indicate that in the coming months, Covid-19 could infect 60% of the Chinese population and even if 90% are asymptomatic or with mild symptoms, deaths among patients most exposed due to age or other pathologies could fluctuate from a minimum of 600,000 to a maximum of two million. There are two main causes for alarm: the policy of lockdowns and quarantines indefinitely in these three years would now have left people suddenly more exposed to the infection and its effects. But on this point there are opposing assessments in Beijing, where the authorities underline the success of the prevention of Covid Zero and argue that the line was abandoned because the pathogenicity of Omicron geometrically decreased compared to the previous variants. And then the incomplete vaccination campaign, especially among the elderly: in the 70-79 age range only 48% received three doses; in those over 80, only 59% had a dose; 51% two; 20% just completed the cycle with the third dose. Chinese vaccines have shown protective efficacy against serious disease by a few percentage points lower than those of Western products. But this is not considered a serious problem by the international scientific community: even a 75% coverage of hospitalization is a good shield for the population and the hospital system.
The hope that the models of progression of infections and mortality developed by international (and also Chinese) epidemiologists for the next six months will prove exaggerated. But of course, with the registration system introduced in China, which puts only those who die of respiratory failure and pneumonia on the Covid death list, the Chinese numbers will remain shrouded in doubt.
December 21, 2022 (change December 21, 2022 | 15:58)
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