Better to know: People queueing to buy antigen test kits at a pharmacy amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Nanjing. — AFP
BEIJING: China raced to vaccinate its most vulnerable people in anticipation of waves of Covid-19 infections, with some analysts expecting the death toll to soar after a loosening of strict controls that kept the pandemic at bay for three years.
The push comes as the World Health Organisation also raised concerns that China’s 1.4 billion population was not adequately vaccinated, and the United States offered to help China deal with a surge in infections.
Beijing last Wednesday began dismantling its tough ‘zero-Covid’ controls, dropping testing requirements and easing quarantine rules that had caused mental anxiety for tens of millions and battered the world’s second largest economy.
The pivot away from President Xi Jinping’s signature “zero-Covid” policy followed unprecedented widespread protests against it.
But, WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said Covid-19 infections were exploding in China well before the government’s decision to phase out its stringent regime.
“There’s a narrative at the moment that China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden the disease is out of control,” Ryan told a briefing in Geneva.
“The disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease.”
There are increasing signs of chaos during China’s change of tack – with long queues outside fever clinics, runs on medicines, and panic buying across the country.
One video posted online on Wednesday showed several people, wearing thick winter clothes, hooked up to intravenous drips as they sat on stools on the street outside a clinic in central Hubei province. Reuters verified the location of the video.
For all its efforts to quell the virus since it erupted in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, China may now pay a price for shielding a population that lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly, analysts say.
“Authorities have let cases in Beijing and other cities spread to the point where resuming restrictions, testing, and tracing would be largely ineffective in bringing outbreaks under control,” analysts at Eurasia Group said in a note yesterday.
“Upward of one million people could die from Covid in the coming months.”
Other experts have put the potential toll at more than two million.
China has reported just 5,235 Covid-related deaths so far, extremely low by global standards.
China’s equity markets and its yuan currency fell yesterday amid concerns of the virus spread.
China reported 2,000 new symptomatic Covid-19 infections for Dec 14, compared with 2,291 a day earlier.
The official figures, however, have become a less reliable guide as testing has dropped. — Reuters
