GENEVA - Covid-19 infections were exploding in China well before the government’s decision to abandon its strict “zero-Covid” policy, a World Health Organization director said on Wednesday, quashing suggestions that the sudden reversal caused a spike in cases.
The comments by the WHO’s emergencies director Mike Ryan came as he warned of the need to ramp up vaccinations in the world’s No. 2 economy.
Speaking at a briefing with media, he said the virus was spreading “intensively” in the nation long before the lifting of restrictions.
“There’s a narrative at the moment that China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden the disease is out of control,” he said.
“The disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. And I believe China decided strategically that was not the best option anymore.”
Beijing started pivoting away from its signature “zero-Covid” policy this month after protests against the economically damaging curbs championed by President Xi Jinping.
The sudden loosening of restrictions has sparked long queues outside fever clinics in a worrying sign that a wave of infections is building, even though official tallies of new cases have trended lower recently as authorities eased back on testing.
In its most recent Covid-19 report for the week to Nov 27, the WHO said China had reported increasing hospitalisations for four consecutive weeks.
“So the challenge that China and other countries still have is: are the people that need to be vaccinated, adequately vaccinated, with the right vaccines and the right number of doses and when was the last time those people had the vaccines,” said Mr Ryan.
Western vaccine
The elation in China that met the changes in policy allowing people to live with the virus has quickly faded amid mounting concerns about surging infections because the population lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly.
WHO’s senior epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said the UN agency is providing technical advice to China and Mr Ryan said there are open channels.
Among the first major announced deals in which a Western drugmaker will supply China with Covid-19 therapies, China Meheco Group said on Wednesday it would import and distribute Pfizer’s oral Covid-19 treatment Paxlovid.
Earlier in the briefing, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “hopeful” that the pandemic, which has killed more than 6.6 million people since it was first detected in Wuhan, China three years ago, will no longer be considered a global emergency some time next year.
Meanwhile, according to a new study by researchers in Hong Kong, almost one million people in China may die from Covid-19 as the government rapidly abandons pandemic curbs,
In the absence of a mass vaccination booster campaign and other measures to reduce the impact of the virus, some 684 people per million would die in a nationwide reopening, according to the report, which was co-authored by Mr Gabriel Leung, the former dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, and two of his colleagues.
The researchers looked at different scenarios following China’s recent moves, including the Dec 7 announcement of 10 measures to roll back core zero-Covid principles such as mandatory testing and lockdowns.
“Our results suggest that local health systems across all provinces would be unable to cope with the surge of Covid-19 cases posed by reopening in December 2022–January 2023,” they wrote.
A former undersecretary for food and health, Mr Leung is a well-known figure in Hong Kong. The city’s former leader Carrie Lam has said she tightened Covid-19 restrictions in the city after receiving WhatsApp messages from him. REUTERS, BLOOMBERG
