Waves of coronavirus approaching China have alarmed world experts

The alarm of the World Health Organization experts, in particular, is raised by questions about the statistics on the incidence of COVID announced by the Chinese authorities. Although formally the number of severe cases is relatively low, “intensive care units are filling up,” writes The Guardian, noting that official figures from China have become an unreliable guide after the country of 1.4 billion people began dismantling an unpopular regime this month. lockdowns and testing for the absence of COVID-19.

The sudden change has taken the fragile healthcare system by surprise, with hospitals scrambling to fill new beds, pharmacies scrambling for drugs, and governments rushing to build dedicated clinics. Experts gloomily predict that China could face more than a million Covid deaths next year.

“Relatively few cases in intensive care units are being reported in China, but oddly enough, intensive care units are filling up,” WHO director of emergencies Mike Ryan said recently. “I would not like to say that China is not actively telling us what is happening. I think they are behind [с данными]”.

The WHO has said it is ready to work with China to improve the way it collects information on critical factors such as hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus.

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China has shifted to a narrower definition of COVID deaths, which will drastically reduce its death statistics as cases rise after easing zero covid rules, according to The Guardian.

The official number of deaths since the pandemic began in Wuhan three years ago, even excluding one death on Wednesday, stands at just over 5,200 — an extremely low number compared to many far less populated countries.

Infectious disease expert Professor Wang Guiqiang said at a State Council press conference the other day that the National Health Commission recently revised its guidelines to “reflect deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic scientifically and objectively,” classifying only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure. in a patient with coronavirus as death from COVID.

“Deaths caused by other diseases, such as cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease and heart attacks, are not classified as coronavirus-related deaths,” said Professor Wang. He said that compared to the first outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, when most patients died of respiratory failure, “underlying diseases are the leading cause of death from Omicron infection. Respiratory failure directly caused by the new coronavirus infection is rare.”

But as The Guardian highlights, the new method is at odds with guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO), which says many countries are now using “excess mortality” as a more accurate measure of the true impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Excess mortality is defined as the difference in the total number of deaths during a crisis compared to those expected under normal conditions. According to the WHO, the excess deaths from COVID-19 account for both the total number of deaths directly related to the virus and indirect impacts such as the disruption of essential health services. By these criteria, China’s new method of counting COVID deaths, which excludes underlying diseases, will make it difficult to compare deaths with other countries.

Benjamin Mather, assistant professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University, said “many cases” would be missed in the classification, especially since people who are vaccinated, including the Chinese vaccines, are less likely to die from pneumonia. Blood clots, heart problems and sepsis – the body’s extreme response to infection – have been responsible for countless deaths among COVID patients around the world.

Western media reports dozens of hearses lined up outside the Beijing crematorium despite China reporting no new COVID deaths. For example, Reuters, citing an eyewitness, spoke of a large police presence and about 40 hearses queuing to enter a crematorium in Beijing’s Tongzhou district, while the parking lot was full. Inside the crematorium, witnesses saw about 20 coffins gathered in anticipation of cremation. The staff were wearing hazmat suits, and smoke was rising from five of the 15 stoves. However, as Western media admit, it was not possible to verify whether these deaths were caused by covid or other causes.

It is reported, citing funeral directors, that some residents of the Chinese capital have to wait several days to have deceased relatives cremated if they do not pay high fees for timely services. As noted by The Guardian, this may also indicate a growing number of deaths. Workers at two different funeral homes in Beijing told Reuters that there has been a sharp increase in the number of residents wishing to have deceased relatives cremated, leading to queues and delays.

One worker at a major funeral home in western Beijing announced that customers could skip the long queue and registration process for a fee of 26,000 yuan ($3,730). “For the whole of Beijing, fast delivery of hearses, no queues for cremation,” said a worker in an advertisement for the service on the popular short video app Douyin.

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Concerns about the COVID outbreak are not limited to Beijing. Shanghai Deji Hospital estimates that half of the city’s 25 million residents will be infected by the end of the year.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that the organization needed more information on the severity of the disease, hospitalization and intensive care unit requirements for a comprehensive assessment. “WHO is very concerned about the evolving situation in China with an increase in reports of severe illnesses,” he said.

For his part, Mike Ryan noted that the surge in cases in China was not only due to the lifting of restrictive policies, but also to the backlog in vaccination rates. Revaccination rates among Chinese over 60 and most at risk of severe disease lag behind many other countries, he said, and that Chinese-made vaccines are about 50% effective. He noted that there has been a surge in vaccinations in China in recent weeks, adding that it remains to be seen whether enough vaccinations can be made in the coming weeks to prevent the impact of the Omicron wave.

“This is simply inadequate protection for a population as large as China, with so many vulnerable people,” Ryan argued, adding: “Vaccination is an exit strategy for Omicron.

And Wang Guangfa, a respiratory specialist at Peking University First Hospital, told the state-run Global Times that the death toll could rise sharply and predicted a surge in severe cases in Beijing in the coming weeks: “We must act quickly and prepare fever clinics, resources for emergency and heavy therapy.

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China has approved nine domestically developed COVID-19 vaccines for use in China, more than any other country, but the drugs have not been updated to target the highly infectious Omicron variant, The Guardian notes. Beijing has so far insisted on using only domestic vaccines, which are not based on mRNA technology, but on older technologies.

Meanwhile, Wang Guangfa predicts a surge in severe COVID cases in Beijing in the coming weeks. He expects the coronavirus wave to peak at the end of January and life will likely return to normal by the end of February or early March. The expert urged medical institutions to expand intensive care units and increase resources for emergency and severe care to withstand the impact of the oncoming wave of infections.

The complexity of the situation is that it does not only concern China – several leading scientists and WHO advisers have warned that it may be too early to declare a global end to the emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic due to a potentially devastating wave bearing down on China. The zero-COVID policy allowed China to maintain a relatively low incidence and death rate among its nearly 1.5 billion people, but the relaxation of strict rules has changed the global picture, experts say.

“The question is whether this can be called a post-pandemic when such a large part of the world is actually just entering the second wave,” worries Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans from WHO. – It is clear that we are in a completely different phase [пандемии]but in my opinion, the waiting wave in China is a wild card.”

Meanwhile, Chinese health officials are trying to cool the international community’s concerns about the possibility of coronavirus mutations, saying that the likelihood of new more pathogenic strains is low. And this point of view is also supported by a number of foreign experts. So, the president of the Asia-Pacific Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infections, Paul Tambia, in a commentary to Reuters, said: “I don’t think this is a threat to the world. Most likely, the virus will behave like any other human virus and adapt to the environment in which it circulates, becoming more transmissible and less virulent.”