On the 15th, patients gather in front of a fever clinic in downtown Beijing, the capital of China. [사진=로이터·연합뉴스]
Did you open Pandora’s box? After the transition period ‘With Corona’, the speed of spread of Corona 19 in China is unusual. It was predicted that up to 800 million people could be infected and more than 2 million people would die.
According to Bloomberg on the 15th (local time), researchers at the University of Hong Kong predicted in a recent paper that 684 deaths per 1 million people would occur if China conducted a national reopening (reopening of economic activity) without mass vaccination booster shots and others. measures. Assuming that China’s population is 1.4 billion, an arithmetic calculation suggests that the number of deaths will reach about 960,000.
On the same day, according to an NPR report by US media, Xichen, an associate professor of public health at Yale University who is also a Chinese public health expert, said, “Recently, my friend Liang Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Chinese. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention told the official media that when the first wave of Corona 19 hits, it will actually be (China) It was announced that around 60% of the population could be infected. ” In this case, arithmetically, it is calculated that about 840 million Chinese could be infected with Corona 19.
In addition, in a paper published last month in the Shanghai Preventive Medicine Journal, Zhou Jia-tong, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the Guangxi Tribe Autonomous Region, predicted that if China eases quarantine in the same way as Hong Kong, there will be a number the confirmed cases will reach more than 233 million and the number of deaths will reach more than 2 million. I predicted too
Although the detailed figures vary according to expert, most agree that the number of confirmed cases and deaths will increase significantly after China switches to ‘With Corona’. In fact, this is also a phenomenon that appears in China right now.
According to the People’s Daily last week, the number of ‘fever patients’ in China exploded 16 times in a week. Although the number of officially confirmed cases has decreased due to a reduction in PCR tests after the change to ‘With Corona’, the rapid increase in suspected confirmed ‘febrile patients’ suggests the spread of Corona 19 .In response, the Chinese Health Commission (Wiganyu) announced on the 14th that it would stop counting the number of asymptomatic Corona 19 infections, stating that it was impossible to determine the exact number. Also on the 16th, the Wall Street Journal reported that one of Beijing’s designated Corona 19 crematoria was busy handling the influx of bodies.
The most frightening thing is the scale and speed of the spread of COVID-19. Authorities at the Wigan Commission estimated that China’s current corona infection reproduction index (R) value is 16, which means that one infected person can infect 16 people. In early 2020, the average R value at the start of the Corona 19 pandemic was 2 to 3, and when the number of Omicron mutations confirmed in the United States increased last winter, the R value was found to be 10 to 11. “It’ very contagious,” said Ben Cowley, professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong.
In the end, the insistence on the use of Chinese vaccines and joint immunity difficulties are identified as the main reasons for the rapid spread of Corona 19 in China. According to statistics, about 90% of Chinese people over the age of 18 have completed two rounds of Chinese vaccine, but it is noted that the effect is less compared to Western vaccines. And the fact that only 56 percent of the elderly and two-thirds of those over 80 have completed their third dose of the vaccine is also a risk factor, NPR reported.
“At this point, it is unlikely that the death rate in China (Corona 19) will be higher than the rate in the United States (0.3%),” said Professor Cowley. “But China is facing a very difficult winter.”
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