Beijing : After the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, China is experiencing a massive surge in coronavirus cases. Hospitals are completely overwhelmed in China, reported Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist.
More than 60% of China and 10% of the world’s population is likely to be infected with Covid-19 over the next 90 days with deaths likely in the millions, top epidemiologist and health economist Eric Feigl-Ding has estimated.
According to Feigl-Ding, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) goal is “let whoever needs to be infected, infected, let whoever needs to die, die. Early infections, early deaths, early peak, early resumption of production.”
“THERMONUCLEAR BAD—Hospitals completely overwhelmed in China ever since restrictions dropped. Epidemiologist estimate >60% of China & 10% of Earth’s population likely infected over next 90 days. Deaths likely in the millions—plural. This is just the start,” he tweeted.
China’s health authorities on Monday announced two Covid-19 deaths — the country’s first reported fatalities in weeks — amid an expected surge of illnesses after it eased its strict “zero-Covid” approach.
Unofficial reports point to a widespread wave of new coronavirus cases, and relatives of victims and people who work in the funeral business said deaths tied to Covid-19 were increasing. Before Monday’s two reported deaths — both in Beijing — China had not reported a death from Covid-19 since December. 4.
Wall Street Journal reported this week that one of Beijing’s designated crematoria for Covid-19 patients has been flooded with dead bodies in recent days, offering an early hint at the human cost of the country’s abrupt loosening of pandemic restrictions.
Beijing Dongjiao Crematory, on the eastern edge of the Chinese capital, has experienced a jump in requests for cremation and other funerary services, according to people who work at the compound, reported WSJ.
Doubling time in China may not be days anymore. Doubling time now possibly “hours” says some experts — let that sink in. R is hard to calculate if doubling is less than 1 day because it’s hard to PCR test that fast. The point is China & the world is in deep trouble, said Feigl-Ding.
Moreover, the deaths in mainland China is being hugely underreported. Through a survey of hospitals, funeral parlors and related funeral industry chains in Beijing–there is a recent explosion in funeral services caused by the sharp increase in deaths.
According to the epidemiologist, the cremation in Beijing is nonstop. Morgues are overloaded. Refrigerated containers needed. 24/7 funerals. 2000 bodies backlogged for cremations. Sound familiar? It is spring 2020 all over again– but this time for China, emulating more Western-mass infection approach.
People rushed to a pharmaceutical factory to buy ibuprofen because it is completely sold out elsewhere.
One said that, typically, all the day’s corpses would be cremated by midday. But the recent increase in the number of bodies has meant that cremations are now taking place long after nightfall.
In a series of abrupt moves this month, China dismantled much of the lockdown, testing and quarantine regimes that underpinned its ‘Zero Covid’ approach for the past three years to suppress even small outbreaks of the virus.
Because of the lifting of testing requirements, the scale of China’s coronavirus surge has been hard to measure. Daily national case counts have steadily fallen as fewer people test themselves at public facilities, and health authorities earlier this week stopped releasing daily tallies of asymptomatic cases for the first time since the pandemic began.
Earlier this month, the Beijing Emergency Medical Centre urged only critically ill patients to call for ambulances, saying that emergency requests had jumped to 30,000 a day from an average of about 5,000, straining the capacity of paramedics to respond, reported WSJ.
According to National Health Commission regulations, corpses diagnosed as Covid-positive or suspected of being Covid-positive must be cremated immediately in specially designated furnaces, with no dressing of bodies or memorial services.
But many of China’s 1.4 billion people remain vulnerable to the virus because of limited exposure, low vaccination rates and poor investment in emergency care.
