China is expecting a peak in COVID-19 infections within a week, a health official said, with authorities predicting extra strain on the country’s health system even as they downplay the disease’s severity and continue to report no new deaths.
A POTENTIAL WAVE of coronavirus infections in China is worrying experts. — CFOTO/SIPA USA VIA REUTERS CONNECT
Its containment measures had slowed the economy to its lowest growth rate in nearly half a century, jamming global supply chains and trade. As Chinese workers increasingly fall ill, more disruption is expected in the short term before the economy bounces back later next year. “The peak infection will also increase the rate of severe disease, which will have a certain impact on our entire medical resources,” he said, adding the wave will last another one or two months after that.Nevertheless, Zhang said he had visited nursing homes around Shanghai, noticing the number of elderly dealing with severe symptoms was low. Worries over the near-term impact of China’s COVID wave pushed stock markets in China, Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia lower. The yuan also weakened.
More than a dozen global health experts, epidemiologists, residents and political analysts interviewed by Reuters identified the failure to vaccinate the elderly and communicate an exit strategy to the public, as well as excessive focus on eliminating the virus, as causes of the strain on China’s medical infrastructure.
A shipment of 11,500 BioNTech mRNA vaccines for German nationals in China have arrived at the German embassy in Beijing, an embassy spokesperson told Reuters on Friday. The embassy hopes the first doses will be given out “as soon as possible”, the spokesperson said.The World Health Organization has received no data from China on new COVID hospitalizations since Beijing lifted its zero-COVID policy.
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