Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday ordered to “build a bulwark” against Covid-19 and “protect” lives in China, as his country faces an outbreak of contamination after the abandonment of health restrictions. Since 2020, China has imposed strict measures, in the name of a so-called “zero Covid” policy which has made it possible to protect those most at risk and those who are poorly vaccinated. The power put an end, without notice, on December 7 to most of the measures, against a backdrop of growing exasperation of the population and considerable impact on the economy.
Since then, the number of cases has exploded, raising fears of high mortality among the oldest, who are particularly vulnerable. Many crematoriums surveyed have reported an unusually high influx of bodies to be cremated in recent days. A situation largely ignored by the Chinese media. Hospitals are also overwhelmed, while anti-flu drugs are more difficult to find in pharmacies, as the country learns to live with the virus.
About 1 million deaths in the next few months?
“The prevention and control of Covid-19 in China is facing a new situation with new tasks,” said Xi Jinping on Monday quoted by state television CCTV. This is the Beijing strongman’s first public comment since the unexpected abandonment of most health measures. “We must carry out a more targeted patriotic health campaign (…) and build a solid bulwark against the epidemic”, ordered Xi Jinping, without further details.
This lifting of restrictions could lead to the death of around 1 million people in the coming months, according to estimates from several Western studies. China announced on Sunday that it would no longer publish Covid statistics. They were widely criticized because of their total discrepancy with the current epidemic wave hitting the country. Previously, quasi-compulsory PCR tests made it possible to reliably follow the epidemic trend. But infected people now carry out self-tests at home and rarely report the results to the authorities, which prevents having reliable figures.
Undervalued estimates
According to the official report, the most populous country on the planet has recorded only six deaths from Covid since the lifting of restrictions. A figure largely underestimated according to experts. Some local governments, however, are beginning to put forward estimates of the scale of the epidemic. Health authorities in Zhejiang (east), south of Shanghai, ruled on Sunday that the number of daily contaminations now exceeded the million mark in this province with a population of 65 million people.
Half a million inhabitants are also infected daily in Qingdao (east), a city of 10 million inhabitants, estimated a municipal official quoted by the official press. In Beijing, the authorities spoke on Saturday of “a large number of infected people” and called for “everything to be done to improve the recovery rate and reduce the mortality rate”.