Beijing/Washington:
Cities across China scrambled to install hospital beds and build fever screening clinics on Tuesday, as the United States said Beijing’s surprise decision to let the virus run wild was a concern for the world.
China abruptly this month began dismantling its strict “zero-COVID” regime of mass lockdowns following curbside protests that had largely kept the virus at bay for three years, but at a significant cost to society and the second largest economy in the world.
As the virus sweeps through a country of 1.4 billion people who lack natural immunity because they have been protected for so long, concerns are growing about possible deaths, virus mutations and the impact, again, on the economy.
“We know that when the virus spreads, it’s in the wild, that it has the potential to mutate and pose a threat to people everywhere,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday. adding that the virus outbreak was also a concern for the Chinese economy and thus global growth.
Beijing reported five COVID-related deaths on Tuesday, after two on Monday, the first fatalities in weeks.
Overall, China has reported just 5,242 COVID deaths since the pandemic broke out in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, an extremely low number by global standards.
But there are growing doubts that the statistics reflect the full impact of a disease ripping through cities after China dropped curbs, including most mandatory testing on Dec. 7.
Since then, some hospitals have been flooded, pharmacies have run out of medicines and the streets are unusually quiet as residents stay home, sick or afraid of contracting the disease.
Some health experts estimate that 60% of people in China – equivalent to 10% of the world’s population – could become infected in the coming months and more than 2 million could die.
In the capital Beijing, guards patrolled the entrance of a designated COVID-19 crematorium, where Reuters journalists saw a long line of hearses and workers in protective suits carrying the dead in on Saturday. Reuters was unable to immediately determine whether the deaths were due to COVID.
Healthcare Tribes
Top health officials have softened their tone on the threat posed by the disease in recent weeks, a reversal of previous reports that the virus had to be eradicated to save lives, even as the rest of the world opened up.
They also downplayed the possibility that the now-predominant Omicron strain could evolve to become more virulent.
“The probability of a sudden large mutation … is very low,” Zhang Wenhong, a prominent infectious disease specialist, told a forum on Sunday in comments reported by state media.
But there are growing signs that the virus is plaguing China’s fragile health system.
Cities are stepping up efforts to expand intensive care units and other treatment facilities for severe COVID cases, the state-run Global Times reported Monday.
Authorities have also raced to build so-called fever clinics, facilities where medical staff check patients’ symptoms and administer drugs. Often associated with hospitals, these clinics are common in mainland China and are designed to prevent the wider spread of infectious diseases in healthcare settings.
In the past week, major cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Wenzhou announced they have added hundreds of fever clinics, according to government WeChat accounts and media reports.
A gym in Beijing’s Shijingshan district was converted late last week into a fever clinic with more than 150-bed cubicles covering a basketball court, Reuters reports.
The spreading virus is expected to shrink China’s economy, which is expected to grow by 3% this year, its worst performance in nearly half a century.
A survey by World Economics showed on Monday that business confidence in China fell to its lowest point since January 2013 in December.
China kept lending rates unchanged for the fourth straight month on Tuesday.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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