WHO says too early to declare end of Covid pandemic because of China’s ‘potentially devastating wave’
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that it may be too early to declare the end of the pandemic because of the “potentially devastating wave” in China.
Scientists have predicted more than one million Covid-related deaths next year as China battled a severe surge of cases that have overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums after Beijing’s decision to lift lockdowns.
Under the new counting method adopted by the country, five Covid-related deaths were recorded on Tuesday.
Reuters quoted Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans – who sits on a WHO committee tasked with advising on the status of the Covid-19 emergency – as saying that “the question is whether you can call it post-pandemic when such a significant part of the world is actually just entering its second wave”.
The expert added: “It’s clear that we are in a very different phase [of the pandemic], but in my mind, that pending wave in China is a wild card.”
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in September that “the end is in sight” for the pandemic.
The United States has offered China help with vaccines as the country battled the massive Covid surge. “It’s important that all countries focus on getting people vaccinated and making testing and treatment easily available,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price told the media.
He added that containing the virus was in the interest of the whole world.
It was reported by the local media that crematoriums in China were struggling with an onslaught of Covid-related deaths. AFP reported on Tuesday that in Chongqing, a city of 30 million where authorities this week urged people with mild Covid symptoms to go to work, one worker said that their crematorium had run out of space to keep bodies.
AFP quoted the staffer as saying that “the number of bodies picked up in recent days is many times more than previously. We are very busy, there is no more cold storage space for bodies”.
China’s National Health Commission (NHC) had said on Tuesday that only Covid-19 patients who die from respiratory failure will be counted towards the official death toll. On Tuesday, the commission said that there were only five people — two on Monday and none in the previous two weeks.
Wang Guiqiang, an adviser to the NHC and director of the infectious diseases department at Peking University First Hospital, had said that “deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure resulting from Covid-19 will be classified as Covid deaths, while deaths caused by other underlying diseases, such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, will not be counted as Covid-induced deaths”.
However, Benjamin Mazer, an assistant professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University, said that classification would miss “a lot of cases”, especially as people who are vaccinated, including those with the Chinese shots, are less likely to die of pneumonia.
“It doesn’t make sense to apply this sort of March 2020 mindset where it’s only Covid pneumonia that can kill you when we know that in the post-vaccine era, there’s all sorts of medical complications,” he said.
The Associated Press reported that the nation’s overall fatalities since the pandemic began were revised to 5,241 after removing one death in Beijing.
That number might rise sharply in the near future, with state-run Global Times citing a leading Chinese respiratory expert predicting a spike in severe cases in the capital over the coming weeks, the Associated Press reported.
“We must act quickly and prepare fever clinics, emergency and severe treatment resources,” Mr Wang was quoted as saying.
The World Bank on Tuesday cut its China growth outlook for this year and next, citing the abrupt loosening of COVID measures among other factors, it was reported.
