BEIJING —
China on Monday reported its first
deaths from COVID-19 since loosening its hardline containment policy, as
hospitals and crematoriums struggle with an outbreak authorities say is
impossible to track.
اضافة اعلان
The country is pressing ahead with unwinding years
of its zero-COVID policy, with people in one megacity now even told they can go
to work if they are visibly ill.
Official case numbers are widely considered
unreliable following the end of mandatory mass testing, while fears are mounting
of a wave of infections in poor rural areas during the upcoming Lunar New Year
holidays.
Authorities on Monday reported two deaths from the
virus in the capital Beijing, where fear of COVID has emptied streets and
stripped pharmacies of medications.
Millions of unvaccinated elderly Chinese remain
vulnerable to the disease. Accounts from strained hospitals and crematoriums
suggest the true toll of the outbreak has gone unreported.
“Numbers don’t tell the full story,” Hoe Nam Leong,
a Singapore-based infectious diseases expert, told AFP, saying he expected the
real number of deaths was higher.
A lack of testing likely meant many infections were
going unnoticed, he added.
Some hospitals were too full to admit patients,
while health workers may be downplaying COVID as a cause of death, Leong said.
“Individuals may die of a heart attack from the
stress of infection. The main cause of death would be a heart attack, but the
underlying cause is COVID.”
Back to work
Authorities are nevertheless
determined to press ahead, with the southern city of
Chongqing — home to around
32 million people — becoming one of the first parts of China to let people
attend work even with visible symptoms.
The Chongqing Daily newspaper reported Monday,
citing a notice from municipal authorities, that “mildly symptomatic” state
employees “can work as normal”.
In Beijing, authorities urged residents to “resume
normal life and production as soon as possible”, saying recovered patients
would not need a test to enter public spaces. Officials also encouraged the
resumption of conferences and weddings.
It marks a dramatic reversal in a country where
previously a single infection could send thousands of people into lockdown.
The Chongqing notice, issued Sunday, also urged
residents not to take tests “unnecessarily” or require people to show a
negative result, with exceptions for facilities such as care homes, schools and
prisons.
Local governments across China have generally
encouraged people to isolate at home while recovering — a major shift from the
previous policy of forcing people into state quarantine facilities.
On Sunday, the eastern province of
Zhejiang — a
major economic hub home to more than 60 million people — said those with mild
symptoms could “continue to work, if need be, on the prerequisite of taking
personal protections”.
‘Three waves’
Visits to hospitals and
clinics surged in the days following China’s lifting of restrictions, though
the World Health Organization said the virus was already spreading widely as
“control measures ... were not stopping the disease”.
One of the country’s top epidemiologists warned
China was facing “the first of three waves” expected over the winter, according
to comments carried Sunday by financial news outlet Caijing.
Wu Zunyou said the current surge would last until
mid-January and mainly affect cities, before widespread travel over the Lunar
New Year holiday triggers a second wave through the middle of February.
The third peak would hit from late February to
mid-March as those infected over the holiday return to their places of work, he
added.
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