Beijing is likely to see an increase in severe Covid-19 cases over the next two weeks, a leading Chinese respiratory specialist warned on Tuesday, as the capital continues to battle rising infections following the abrupt withdrawal of stringent ‘zero-Covid’ policies in early December.
Respiratory disease expert Wang Guangfa warned that medical infrastructure in Beijing faces “additional stress” and advised the government to quickly add intensive care unit (ICU) beds in hospitals, predicting a possible increase in the number of Covid-related deaths in the days ahead if that’s not done, according to report in the state-run Global Times.
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“We must act quickly and prepare fever clinics, emergency and severe treatment resources,” Wang from the Peking University First Hospital, told the newspaper on Tuesday.
Beijing’s elderly with comorbidities are particularly at risk of suffering from a severe Covid-19 infection. The city of 22 million people has over 4.41 million residents above 60 years and over 3.1 million residents above 65 years, according to official data from 2021.
Wang suggested “each ICU bed should be linked to a competent doctor and 2.5 to 3 nurses capable of treating critical cases”, the report said.
{{/usCountry}}Wang suggested “each ICU bed should be linked to a competent doctor and 2.5 to 3 nurses capable of treating critical cases”, the report said.
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Officially, around seven people have died of Covid-19 in China since Sunday, including at least two in Beijing, a statistic met with scepticism given how rapidly the outbreak has spread in the past two weeks. Reports from other populous cities like Guangzhou in the south and Hangzhou in the east have also said the number of people coming to fever clinics is increasing every day.
According to a forecast by Wang, the Covid-19 peak in China will “last till the end of Spring Festival (Lunar New Year) which will fall on January 22 and that life would gradually return to normal around the end of February and the beginning of March”, the report said.
Wang’s analysis of how Covid waves will hit China mirrors what Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, has said.
Wu predicted that China would experience three waves of Covid infections this winter with the first wave already underway.
Wu, according to news website Caixin, sees the first wave of infections running from now until mid-January, followed by a second wave from late January to mid-February, triggered by the movement of people ahead of next month’s Lunar New Year holiday.
“The third wave will last from late February to mid-March, as people return to work after the weeklong holiday, the senior health official said,” Caixin reported.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese will travel across China from their workplaces to their hometowns and back in the run-up to and the end of the holidays in a 40-day period.
Given that the national health commission (NHC) has ended mass testing and counting the number of asymptomatic cases, it is already impossible to calculate the number of new infections, with the confusion - and scepticism - only expected to increase in the coming weeks as millions begin to travel.
The shortage of rapid antigen test (RAT) kits across the country, including in Beijing, continued on Wednesday, making it impossible for many suffering from fever, cold and respiratory discomfort to actually diagnose if they were infected with Covid-19 or not.
China, meanwhile, said Wednesday that not a single person had died of Covid-19 on Tuesday, a day after changing the criteria for recording virus deaths.
The new rule stipulates that only those who had directly died of respiratory failure caused by the Covid-19 virus would be counted under Covid death statistics.
“The (new) definition that focuses on respiratory failure (which develops when the lungs can’t get enough oxygen into the blood) will miss a large number of Covid deaths,” Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, told AFP.
“The new definition is a reversal of the international norm adopted since mid-April during the Shanghai outbreak, which counts a Covid death as anyone who died with Covid,” he added.