From zero-Covid to haphazard easing: Since the explosion of corona cases and the abrupt end of the rigorous zero-tolerance strategy in China two weeks ago, the virus has been spreading at high speed among billions of people. In many places, the hospitals are full. In Beijing, the crematoria can no longer keep up with the cremation of the dead. According to estimates, hundreds of thousands of deaths are to be expected. But the government would prefer to speak only of a harmless “corona cold”.
The leap is huge: while those infected still had to go to hospitals at the beginning of December, several major cities are now even allowing them to return to work. The only requirement is that they show no or only mild symptoms. This is what happened in Guiyang in southwest China, where such a call went out to employees of supermarkets, medical facilities, delivery services and government agencies to go back to work. The party newspaper “Global Times” spoke of a “better balance between epidemic prevention and social and economic development”.
After almost three years of lockdowns, forced quarantines, mass testing and contact tracing, the world’s most populous country suddenly lifted its tough zero-tolerance policy on December 7th. The reason for the turnaround was that the infections with the new omicron variants were no longer as severe. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) saw the main reason in the fact that the situation had gotten out of control due to many protests and the tough measures could no longer be sustained.
Expert: There was “no strategy” for easing
The turnaround caught the hospitals unprepared because until then there was “no strategy” for easing, as a European health expert described. The vaccination campaign had not been sufficiently advanced. Many of the 260 million older people over the age of 60 are inadequately protected: only 70 percent of those over 60 and 40 percent of those over 80 have received a booster injection. Modern foreign vaccines are not approved for political reasons. For many Chinese, it has been a long time since the last vaccination, so that the disease hits them hard.
Instead of expanding hospitals and creating more intensive care beds, quarantine camps for tens of thousands had been built. Also, no stocks of medicines had been built up. Fever and cold medicine or rapid tests were sold out immediately after the easing. Even after two weeks, there are still no supplies: “We Chinese are too many,” explains a pharmacist about the empty shelves.
There are no longer any official figures on the infection situation, but according to rough estimates, more than half of the 21 million Beijingers alone are ill. Many restaurants, businesses, shops, banks have closed. First weeks of lockdown, now sick employees: Many shops and restaurants have not survived economically, as shown by the glued-down window fronts in shopping centers.
Three corona waves expected
The Chinese leadership had long praised its zero-Covid strategy as a sign of the systemic superiority of the communist system over Western societies. The people were urgently warned of the dangers of the corona virus and the consequential damage. But now that the measures are no longer effective and the price for the second largest economy is rising, the risk and severity of the disease are downplayed with similar vehemence and the previous policy is defended as “completely correct”.
State propaganda never tires of saying that the about-face, or rather “optimization”, as it is euphemistically called, came “at the right time” – regardless of the winter cold season. The pandemic is now “controllable”, it is asserted. “A return to full normality can be expected in the spring,” the “China Daily” wants to give hope.
Before that, however, three more corona waves will roll through the country, as experts predict. The first will affect urban areas by mid-January. The second will follow by mid-February, when hundreds of millions of people will traditionally travel to their home villages for the Chinese New Year celebrations on January 22. With the return of the travelers, the third wave of infections can be expected by mid-March. In the end, 80 to 90 percent of the 1.4 billion Chinese will be infected, it is predicted.
Many Covid victims are not recorded in the statistics
Even if the disease with omicron is no longer as severe, according to several studies, China is at risk of between a few hundred thousand and almost a million deaths. The amount depends on how quickly boosters are vaccinated, treatment drugs are used, how much mask is worn or further public and social health measures are taken.
Crematoria in Beijing have long waiting times these days. “Since the Covid opening, we have been overwhelmed with work,” an employee at the Dongjiao cremation facility told the Wall Street Journal. “At the moment it’s 24 hours a day. We can’t keep up.” However, many Covid victims are not counted in the statistics at all because the cause of death is based on previous illnesses. According to a very narrow, new definition, only those who have died of pneumonia or respiratory failure after an infection are also counted as corona dead.
