A senior doctor at a top hospital in Shanghai said up to 70 percent of the megacity’s population could be infected with Covid-19 amid a sharp rise in cases in China, state media reported on Tuesday.
The spike in infections came after years of strict restrictions were suddenly loosened last month with little warning or preparation, quickly overwhelming hospitals and cemeteries.
Chen Erzhen, vice president of Ruijin Hospital and a member of Shanghai’s Covid expert advisory panel, estimated that most of the city’s 25 million people could be infected.
“The epidemic is now very widespread in Shanghai, and it may have reached 70 percent of the population, which is 20 to 30 times higher than (in April and May),” he told the Communist Party-owned told Daejeongdong Studio. Mouthpiece People’s Daily.
Shanghai faced a two-month strict lockdown from April, during which more than 600,000 residents were infected and many were moved to mass quarantine centers.
But now, the Omicron variant is spreading rapidly across the city and experts predict that infections will peak in early 2023.
In other major cities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing and Guangzhou, Chinese health officials have suggested the tide is already peaking.
Chen added that his Shanghai hospital is seeing 1,600 emergency admissions a day – double the number before the restrictions were lifted – with 80 percent of them being Covid patients.
“More than 100 ambulances arrive at the hospital every day,” he was quoted as saying, adding that about half of emergency admissions were frail people over the age of 65.
At Tongren Hospital in central Shanghai, AFP reporters saw patients receiving emergency medical care outside the overcrowded facility’s entrance on Tuesday.
– travel wave –
Chinese authorities are bracing for a wave of the virus to hit China’s under-resourced rural interior, as millions return to their hometowns for the week-long Lunar New Year public holiday that begins on January 21. Preparing.
In an interview with state broadcaster CCTV on Monday, National Health Commission (NHC) official Jiao Yahui admitted that dealing with the expected peak in rural areas would be a “huge challenge”.
“What we are most worried about is that no one has returned home for the Lunar New Year in the past three years but they may finally return this year,” Jiao said.
“As a result, there may be a retaliatory surge of urban dwellers into rural areas to visit their relatives, so we are even more concerned about a rural epidemic.”
He also acknowledged the pressure on hospital emergency departments and promised that officials would coordinate medical resources to ensure treatment for patients in underfunded areas.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen countries have imposed Covid-testing restrictions on travelers from China after Beijing announced it would reopen its borders from January 8.
Countries including the United States have also cited Beijing’s lack of transparency around infection data and the risk of new strains as reasons for restricting travelers.
China has recorded just 22 Covid deaths since December, and the criteria for classifying such deaths was dramatically narrowed earlier this month.
But Jiao told reporters on Thursday that China has always published data “in the spirit of openness and transparency about deaths and serious cases of Covid-19”.
“From the beginning to the end, China has always adhered to scientific standards for evaluating deaths from Covid-19, which are in line with international standards,” Jiao said.