- Millions travel across the country for the Lunar New Year
- President Xi expresses concern about older, rural areas
- Analysis shows daily deaths could reach 36,000 next week
- Chinese drugmakers are rushing to make fever drugs
BEIJING, Jan 19 (Portal) – The number of COVID patients requiring intensive care in China’s hospitals has peaked, health officials said on Thursday, as millions traveled across the country in long-awaited reunions with families and fears ahead fuel new outbreaks.
Skepticism about China’s official COVID data has been widespread since last month it abruptly halted antivirus controls that had protected China’s 1.4 billion people from the disease for three years.
China last Saturday said nearly 60,000 people with COVID died in hospitals between December 8 and January 12 — about a 10-fold increase from previous disclosures.
That figure excludes those dying at home, however, and some doctors in China have said they are discouraged from putting COVID on death certificates.
As travel picks up during the busy Lunar New Year holiday season, up to 36,000 people could die from the disease each day, according to the latest forecasts from UK health data company Airfinity. Other experts predict that over 1 million will die from the disease this year.
However, an official with the National Health Commission told a news conference on Thursday that China has passed the peak period of COVID patients in fever clinics, emergency rooms and with critical conditions.
The number of patients with critical conditions in the hospital as of Jan. 17 was more than 40% lower than on Jan. 5, an official said.
The new data comes after President Xi Jinping expressed concern that rural areas were ill-equipped to deal with a surge in infections as the public holiday, which officially begins on January 21, draws throngs of city dwellers bring hometowns back.
Before COVID first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, the holiday season was known as the largest annual migration of people around the world.
“China’s COVID prevention and control is still in a period of stress, but the light is before us, perseverance is victory,” Xi said in a holiday message on state broadcaster CCTV on Wednesday.
“I am most concerned about the rural areas and the farmers. Medical facilities are relatively weak in rural areas, so prevention is difficult and the task is tedious,” Xi said, adding that the elderly are the top priority.
China’s chaotic exit from a regime of mass lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass COVID testing has also prompted a drug rush as people fight back against the disease.
To meet surging demand, drugmakers in China are rushing to triple their capacity to manufacture essential fever and cough medicines, the state-run China Daily reported on Thursday.
China has so far relied on domestic vaccines to fight the pandemic, shunning foreign-made ones that some studies say are more effective, while other foreign treatments for COVID-19 have been hard to come by in China.
Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral drug Paxlovid (PFE.N) is available in China but has been very difficult to obtain through official channels, according to media reports and personal reports. Merck & Co.’s (MRK.N) antiviral drug molnupiravir has also been approved for use but is not yet widely available.
Moderna (MRNA.O) CEO Stephane Bancel told Portal on Wednesday that the US company was in active talks to ship COVID-19 vaccines to China.
At a meeting this week, China’s National Medical Products Administration pledged to stabilize prices of COVID-related drugs and crack down on counterfeit sales.
“SIGNIFICANT LOAD”
Airfinity on Wednesday estimated that 62 million people could be infected with the virus between Jan. 13 and Jan. 27 and that COVID-related daily deaths could peak at 36,000 on Jan. 26, a sharp increase from previous projections .
“Our forecast places a significant strain on China’s healthcare system over the next two weeks, and it is likely that many treatable patients could die due to overcrowded hospitals and a lack of care,” said Matt Linley, Airfinity’s Analytics Director.
Aside from the death toll, there is optimism that China’s reopening will revitalize a $17 trillion economy suffering from one of its lowest growth rates in nearly half a century.
Owners and managers of China’s factories, which produce nearly a third of the world’s goods, are hoping for a return to normal after years of virus restrictions and a recent wave of infections have disrupted business.
China could see a significant recovery from the second quarter, IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath told Portal at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.
Those hopes have propelled China’s major stock markets and the yuan currency to multi-month highs in recent sessions.
Chinese-controlled Hong Kong, which is trying to revive its finance- and trade-dependent economy, said Thursday it would stop quarantining people with COVID-19 from January 30, lifting one of its last major virus restrictions.
Reporting by Bernard Orr, Martin Quin Pollard and the Beijing Newsroom; writing by John Geddie; Edited by Neil Fullick and Tomasz Janowski
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