China could put the lives of more than 1.5 million people at risk if it abandons its harsh “Covid zero” policy without taking extra steps – such as increasing vaccination and access to treatments – say Chinese and American scientists based on in new statistical models.
The article was written by scientists at Shanghai’s Fudan University, with support from researchers at the US National Institutes of Health, and published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Based on global data collected on the severity of the variant, they predict that, with the end of the restrictive policy, the peak demand for intensive care would exceed by more than 15 times the capacity of the health system, which would lead to about 1 .5 million deaths.
However, the researchers said the number of victims could be greatly reduced if there was a focus on vaccination – only about 50% of those over 80 in China are vaccinated – in addition to providing antivirals and maintaining some restrictions.
“The availability of vaccines and antiviral drugs offers an opportunity to move away from ‘Covid zero’. I can’t imagine what is expected,” Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong familiar with the study, told Reuters.
He warned that the transition should be gradual.
Blocking large residential areas
The Chinese regime’s health advisers, however, are betting on “Covid zero”, saying the approach remains essential to defeating the pandemic and buying time for mitigation measures.
China has stuck to its strict strategy even as most other countries that have already championed the policy changed their approach, preferring to live with the virus to reopen their economies and restore personal freedoms.
Chinese authorities have been blocking off large residential areas to contain the viral spread in reaction to any coronavirus outbreak, even when it only affects a small number of people.
Shanghai, home to 25 million people, has been closed for nearly six weeks as it battles the country’s biggest outbreak of the disease so far, with local discontent and mounting economic pressure.
In correspondence published by the medical journal The Lancet last Friday, a team of experts from Shanghai said the city’s vital role in China’s national economy makes lockdown inevitable.
“The spread of the virus to other places could have unimaginably serious consequences,” said the team, which includes Zhang Wenhong, a consultant to the Shanghai authorities on treatments for Covid.
Shanghai’s “dynamic” “zero Covid” policies “would compensate for vulnerabilities in the immune barrier of the population across the country,” they said, pointing out that some 49 million Chinese aged 60 and over remain unvaccinated.
A commentary published in the official journal of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, co-written by the country’s senior health adviser Liang Wannian, claims that “Covid zero” is still needed to avoid a “race” to the system. Chinese health.
“The dynamic ‘Covid zero’ strategies adopted by China have gained a precious window of time into the future,” he said, adding that the country should “seize the opportunity” to develop more drugs and vaccines.
