Some 80% of China’s population has already contracted COVID-19 during the wave of infections following the dismantling of the national zero-tolerance policy against the coronavirus, the chief epidemiologist of the Center for Control and Prevention estimated on Saturday (01.21.2023). of Diseases (CDC) of the country, Wu Zunyou.
Taking into account the recent official population estimate of some 1,411.75 million people in the country at the end of 2022, the percentage offered by the epidemiologist would place the number of cases at about 1,129.4 million.
The figure exceeds the estimate offered a little over a week ago by a Peking University study, which spoke of some 900 million infections until January 11.
In a message posted this Saturday on his Weibo social network account (local equivalent of Twitter, censored in the country), Wu relied on this data to predict that the risk of a second wave of infections occurring in the next two or three months is “very small”.
Regarding the risk derived from “the 5,000 million displacements” expected for the first Lunar New Year without anti-Covid restrictions, Wu acknowledged that the numbers of infections could increase in some areas, but ruled out that there will be a “big rebound”. scale”.
In recent weeks, some voices have questioned the veracity of the figures offered by China, which at the moment acknowledges almost 73,000 deaths of patients with COVID-19 in hospitals between December 8 and January 19.
This balance of deaths contrasts with estimates such as those of the British health sector analysis company Airfinity, which recently assured that some 36,000 deaths could be reached per day during the Lunar New Year holidays -from January 21 to 27- in China.
After almost three years of harsh restrictions, confinements and practically total closure of borders that ended up crystallizing in protests in various parts of the country, China began to dismantle the ‘zero Covid’ at the beginning of December, and on January 8 it reduced the category A -level of maximum danger- to B the management of the disease, thus marking the end of this strategy in practice.
gs (efe, reuters)
