(Staff article from the NEWS.COM.AU on 24 December 2022.)
Dozens of body bags piled up at a Chongqing funeral
parlour, a video released on Thursday (December 22) showed, even as China
continued to report no new COVID-19 deaths. Authorities have narrowed the
criteria for COVID deaths, prompting criticism from many disease experts.
Near 37 million people in China were estimated to have been infected with Covid-19 on a single day this week, according to minutes from a meeting of the country’s National Health Commission, Bloomberg reported.
As many as 248
million people – nearly 18 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion-strong population –
likely contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December, the health body
estimated. The figures dwarf the previous daily record of about four million
and, if accurate, confirm China’s current outbreak is easily the worst ever
seen – all while the official tally screams of a cover up.
Many infected students had to attend school with IV drips to take pressure off overflowing hospitals.
Suspicions of a cover up: The 37 million daily cases estimated for Tuesday is drastically different to the mere 3049 infections that were officially reported, and is several times higher than the previous world record.
Global cases hit
an all-time high of four million on January 19, 2022, as Omicron took the reins
as the most prevalent variant. The estimate is also miles higher than a recent
estimate from London-based predictive health researcher Airfinity, which
earlier this week guessed about one million people in China were being
infected, and 5000 people were dying each day.
Chinese
President Xi Jinping abruptly abandoned his controversial zero-Covid policy
amid fierce anti-government protests, prompting the tsunami of cases while the
official death toll remains suspiciously low.
Officially,
China claimed on Wednesday there had been just eight Covid deaths since the
beginning of December. But that number doesn’t include Solomon Islands
ambassador John Moffat Fugui, who has died in China amid Beijing’s Covid wave,
according to The Australian.
The statistics contrast a growing number of reports of overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums pushed beyond their capacity. Horrifying footage has shown bodies “piling up” outside morgues and in hospital hallways as the medical system buckles.
On Thursday, AFP
reported visiting a crematorium in China and witnessing 40 bodies being
unloaded in two hours. The relatives of several of the deceased told the
publication the deaths were due to Covid. One woman said her elderly relative,
who was suffering from cold symptoms, had tested negative but died after they
could not get an ambulance in time.
A woman in her
20s said she suspected her father had died of Covid, though he had not been
tested. “He died too quickly, while on the way to hospital,” she sobbed. “He
had lung issues to begin with … He was only 69.”
One Shanghai
hospital has told its staff to prepare for a “tragic battle” with COVID-19, as
it expects half of the city’s 25 million people to be infected by the end of
next week. ‘Deceased, deceased’: Makeshift wards handle the dead. “Deceased,
deceased,” a staffer in full protective gear shouted as she handed a nurse a
death certificate, their hospital in central China overflowing with Covid
patients.
At No. 5 People’s Hospital in Chongqing, the main
entrance lobby had been converted into a makeshift Covid ward when AFP visited
on Friday. In the vast atrium, about a dozen beds occupied by mainly elderly
patients on IV drips were cordoned off with red and white tape. In a nearby
room, about 40 mostly elderly and middle-aged patients sat on sofas and lay on
beds receiving IV drips, some coughing. A nurse said they all had Covid.
A political death toll: The official death tally also appears to ebb and flow with political protests in the country. Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong told CNN the definition of a “Covid death” was broadened slightly in April this year, to justify the suffocating restrictions of Shanghai’s Covid lockdown.
Shanghai was
locked down from March to June amid fervent protests, with residents barred
from leaving their homes even for groceries. Just 588 Covid deaths were
reported in that time, from 600,000 infections.
Once the
lockdown lifted, however, the official nationwide death toll sat at zero for
six months – despite soaring case numbers. According to Dr Jin, these
inconsistencies reveal China’s method of counting Covid deaths to be “entirely
subjective.” “The death data has been misleading from the start,” he told the
publication.
Government
seizes medications as residents struggle: Meanwhile, the government has been
accused of seizing medical supplies as residents struggle to buy the
essentials. Authorities urged those with mild symptoms to stay at home and take
treatment into their own hands, leading to a run on everything from ibuprofen
to rapid antigen tests.
However, more
than a dozen Chinese pharmaceutical firms have been tapped by officials to
“secure supplies” of key drugs for the government, according to AFP interviews
and local media. At least 11 of 42 test kit makers whose products are licensed
by China’s medical regulators had a part of their production seized by the
government or received orders from the state, local reports said.
The sweeping illness has “collapsed” China’s broader
logistics and transportation sector. Viral footage taken in China shows huge
piles of boxes lying in the street and packed into overflowing vehicles,
indicating a serious backlog of deliveries.
It adds to an already worrying shortage of pain and fever medications, and sparked concerns of a global shortage given China’s status as a global manufacturing hub.
Spread of a new
variant: There are also fears a dangerous subvariant could form in the
rapid-fire transmission among China’s huge population. Daniel Lucey, a fellow
at the Infectious Diseases Society of America and professor at Dartmouth
University’s Geisel School of Medicine, previously told Bloomberg there would
“certainly be more Omicron subvariants developing in China in the coming days,
weeks and months”.
The World Health
Organisation also rang the alarm bells, with Director-General Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus telling reporters on Wednesday that more information was needed as
a matter of urgency.
China’s foreign
ministry spokesperson, on the other hand, claimed China had always released
Covid-19 information in a “transparent” manner. The outbreak is particularly
worrying in a country with low vaccination rates among the elderly. China has
relied largely on its own vaccines, which have been proven less effective at
preventing serious illness and deaths from Covid than the mRNA jabs used across
the world.
China sees staggering
1m Covid infections a day: China is seeing one million Covid cases every day as
bodies “pile up” in what is likely to be the biggest outbreak the world has
ever seen. An expert has warned that 10 per cent of the entire planet will be
infected with Covid in the next 90 days as China’s crisis goes “thermonuclear
bad”.
China is
floundering under a tidal wave of Covid cases, and is likely seeing one million
infections and 5000 deaths every day as it grapples with what will likely be
the largest outbreak the world has ever seen – all as the official tally
screams of a cover up.
The situation is
only set to get worse as the virus sweeps the country of 1.4 billion people.
The current wave may see the case rate rise to 3.7 million a day in January,
according to London-based predictive health researcher Airfinity. There will
likely be another surge in infections that will push the daily total to 4.2
million in March, they estimated.
Suspicions of a
cover up: Chinese President Xi Jinping abruptly abandoned his controversial
zero-Covid policy amid fierce anti-government protests, prompting the tsunami
of cases while the official death toll remains suspiciously low.
Officially,
China reported just shy of 3000 new cases on Wednesday, and claimed there had
been fewer than 10 Covid deaths since the beginning of December. But that
number doesn’t include Solomon Islands ambassador John Moffat Fugui, who has
died in China amid Beijing’s Covid wave, according to The Australian.
The statistics contrast a growing number of reports
of overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums pushed beyond their capacity.
Horrifying footage has shown bodies “piling up” outside morgues and in hospital
hallways as the medical system buckles.
One Shanghai hospital has told its staff to prepare for a “tragic battle” with COVID-19, as it expects half of the city’s 25 million people to be infected by the end of next week. The Shanghai Deji Hospital, posting to WeChat late on Wednesday, estimated there were 5.43 million cases in the city and that 12.5 million in China’s main commercial hub would be infected by the end of the year.