Expert: China may only call Covid-19 “corona cold” Peru in a state of emergency – how the situation escalated so much

According to its most renowned epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan, China should simply call Covid-19 “corona cold”. According to the party-affiliated newspaper “Global Times”, the government adviser gave the reason on Friday that the infection after the virus mutations in the past two years mainly affected the upper respiratory tract and less than before the lungs. At 0.1 percent, Covid-19 also has a mortality rate similar to that of the common flu. Nevertheless, efforts should be made to prevent serious cases.

After Chinese experts repeatedly warned of the dangers of the coronavirus and the resulting harm to infected people as part of the strict zero-Covid strategy that was lifted a week ago, the severity of the disease has noticeably downplayed since the change of course. . However, according to a new study in Hong Kong, China risks cutting several hundred thousand deaths — depending on how quickly booster drugs are used and how strict public health and social health measures are enforced.

For weeks, a corona wave has been rolling over the most populous country, which the previous hard zero-Covid measures such as lockdowns, forced quarantine and mass testing were ultimately unable to contain. That is why China has also lifted the zero-Covid policy, according to emergency aid coordinator Mike Ryan of the World Health Organization (WHO). So the intensive spreading started long before the turnaround and not as a result of the easing.

There is no precise picture of the situation because there are no reliable figures anymore. One thing is clear: people are getting sick en masse, hospitals are in a hurry. Authorities are calling on people to cure Covid-19 at home. Fever and cold medicines are sold out in many pharmacies. According to Zhong Nanshan, the highly transmissible Omicron variant BF.7 is spreading in northern Beijing and surrounding Hebei province – a sub-variant of BA.5.2, more likely to circulate in the south and southwest of the country. land in metropolitan areas such as Guangzhou and Chongqing.

(yam/sda/dpa)