Zhou’s voice in china: a desperate search for a cure for Covid-19 and the crisis it threatens to destroy the ruling Communist Party

Zhou is part of a growing torrent of dissent that is in reaction to China’s constant zero- Covid lockdowns, which officials insist are necessary to protect their lives against a deadly virus that has killed just six people from tens of thousands of cases reported in the country.

The woman has been under quarantine for half a year since returning from university in the summer, she shouts at the workers. They stared back and appeared unmoved.

China is bracing for an unprecedented wave of Covid-19 cases as it dismantles large parts of its repressive zero-Covid policy, with a leading expert warning Omicron variants were “spreading rapidly” and signs of an outbreak rattling the country’s capital.

A crisis threatens to undermine the ruling Communist Party after a year in which it was turned from a source of legitimacy to a problem.

Observers across the world will be watching the twice-a-decade meeting for signs of the party’s priorities when it comes to its zero-Covid stance, which has been blamed for exacerbating mounting problems in the economy, from stalled growth to a collapsing housing market.

The protest against Xi in Beijing, the capital of China, in response to public outrage over the last few months and the prospect of a repeat

Nerves are high in China’s capital, where online photos posted Thursday appeared to show an exceptionally rare public protest against Xi. “Say no to Covid test, yes to food. Yes, to freedom, even if it meant not being allowed into the building. No to lies, yes to dignity. Yes, the cultural revolution is not needed. Yes, to vote, no to a great leader. One of the banners was hung over an overpass with the message not to be a slave and be a citizen.

The search results for “Sitong Bridge” were immediately removed by Weibo. Before long, key words such as “Beijing,” “Haidian,” and “brave man” were restricted from search.

The super-app, essential for daily life in China, has been banned after several accounts commented on the protest.

Many of them said they were in awe. Some posted a picture of a Chinese pop hit, in a nod to the protester, while others wrote under the tag: “I saw it.”

Yet even in the face of rising public discontent, all the signs suggest Xi and his party plan to stick with the zero-Covid approach, possibly into 2023, with the state media articles this week serving to dampen speculation the country may change tack post-Congress.

In the city where 25 million people have already been locked down for two months, residents are on edge at the prospect of a repeat.

One of the studies, posted as a preprint without peer review on 14 December, uses data from recent outbreaks in Hong Kong and Shanghai to compare different scenarios in China. It found that if infections rise as quickly as they are predicted, hospitals will be overwhelmed. The study expects about a million deaths over the next couple of months.

This poses a key challenge for China as it relaxes its strict “zero-COVID” policy. It has grown more difficult to gauge the true number of cases due to mass-PCR testing no longer mandatory and people with mild symptoms allowed to recuperate at home rather than in a field hospital.

Implications for Coronavirus Studies of Inner Mongolia: A case study of Beijing’s hard line stance during the Beijing Golden Week epoch

Some people in the city have reportedly been spending a lot of time drinking drinking water because of the worries of unpredictable and unexplained snap lock downs.

The announcement that the water authorities have taken action to ensure water quality after discovering saltwater in two of the city’s basins made the panic buying worse.

Many public health and infectious disease experts expect to see more monitoring for new coronaviruses in the new year, and that’s due to the fact that there has been an increase in cases in China.

The country has also seen an uptick in cases in domestic tourist destinations, despite its strict curbs having discouraged people from traveling or spending over China’s Golden Week holiday in early October.

More than240,000 university students in Inner Mongolia are locked down on campuses due to an outbreak, according to the deputy director of the regional Department of Education. The boss of the university’s Communist party was fired after 39 of his students tested positive for the disease.

22 million people are not allowed to leave western Xinjiang because they are required to stay, and the situation in other parts of the country is similar. Xinjiang recorded 403 new cases on Thursday, according to an official tally.

Beijing seems unwilling to move from its hardline stance during it all. It was the People’s Daily that published commentaries reiterating China would not let its guard down.

XBB and Covid-19: Why do we need to wait so long to recover? An optimistic outlook in the US, Europe, and UK

As an unprecedented wave of infections – and deaths – sweeps the country, many have questioned why after sacrificing so much under zero-Covid and waiting for so long to reopen, the government ultimately let the virus rip through a population with little prior warning or preparation.

In the United States, these are BQ.1, BQ.1.1, BF.7, BA.4.6, BA.2.75 and BA.2.75.2. In other countries, the recombinant variant XBB has been rising quickly and appears to be fueling a new wave of cases in Singapore. Cases are rising in Europe and the UK, where these variant have taken hold.

Dr. Peter Hotez, who co-directs the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, says he thinks of them collectively as the Scrabble variants because they use letters that get high scores in the board game like Q, X and B.

There are fewer Covid-19 cases as the US moves into the fall. Normally, that would be a reason for hope that the nation could escape the surges of the past two pandemic winters. There are new variations of the virus that could cause the downward trend to reverse itself.

It is not clear if this gang will continue to run together, each sharing a piece of the Covid-19 infections pie, or if there will be a fight between them as has happened in the past.

The new variants of Covid-19 can cause severe outcomes and the updated bivalent booster vaccines and drugs are expected to be protective against them.

Justman believes there will be new variant of concern in 2023. Is there a chance that we could go back to a situation where we don’t get the protection from prior infections and vaccinations that we need? … I’m going to be optimistic and say I don’t think we’re going to go back to that point.”

The impact of genetic drift on Omicron virus evolution and its spread to new subsymmetries in the U.S, and implications for vaccination

Though they each descend from slightly different branches of the Omicron family tree, these new offshoots have evolved to share many of the same mutations, a phenomenon known as convergent evolution.

The experts believe that the convergence means that the evolution of the virus has entered a new phase, one that will see multiple versions of the virus at the same time.

“What is likely to happen is that we have several co-circulating, semi-dominate lineages going into the winter season,” said Nathan Grubaugh, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.

Because of convergent evolution, several different lineages can obtain similar transmissibility levels versus one new variant taking over.

“This is what predominantly happens for most pathogens, such as the flu and RSV,” Grubaugh wrote in an email. “Now that the virus has adapted pretty well to human transmission, most of what is circulating has high fitness.”

Maria Van Kerkhove, the Covid-19 response technical lead for the World Health Organization, said Wednesday that the large mix of new variants was becoming more difficult for WHO to assess because countries were dialing back on their surveillance.

The guidelines propose setting up mobile clinics, and training medical staff to address people’s safety concerns to boost vaccination. But they stop short of issuing vaccine mandates or introducing strong incentives for local governments to increase their vaccination rates, says Huang. Whether the inevitable rise in infections will lead to a spike in deaths remains to be seen. He says, the full impact remains to be unfolded.

The Omicron subvariant is still the leader in the US. According to CDC estimates, it caused about 68% of new infections in the US last week, but it is quickly being outcompeted by several new sublineages – notably BQ.1 and BQ.1.1.

Fauci told CNN that most people think BA.5 will be the dominant variant, and that the projections vary a little, but generally, most people think so.

The results of genetic drift are the reason for the different variation from BA.4 and BA.5. The viruses share many parts of their genomes.

Their changes are not as big as what happened when the original Omicron arrived. The strain of the virus that left researchers and public health officials scrambling was a result of genetic left field.

“We have a BA.5 bivalent updated vaccine as a booster that we’re pushing people to do. It is matched against the still-dominant variant, which is BA.5 but almost certainly will have a reasonably good degree of cross- protection against the BQ.1.2 and the others as we are already in the middle of October.

According to the latest data from the CDC, 14.8 million people have gotten an updated bivalent booster six weeks into the campaign promoting it. About 10% of the population is eligible to get one.

The Omicron Wave may not be as Large as the BA.5 Wave, but it Might Be Larger Than A Few Months Later

The project scientist who is monitoring variant at the lab said that it is likely to be larger than the BA.5 wave. But Zeller says he doesn’t expect this winter’s surge to reach heights of January’s Omicron wave.

The genetic changes these variants share appear to help them escape the immunity created by vaccines and past infections – a recipe for reinfections and breakthrough infections, particularly for people who haven’t had an updated booster.

People with immune function that has been blunted by drugs, disease or age will benefit from the use of antibody therapies. These are the same people whose bodies don’t respond robustly to vaccines.

“So even if we got money today, it would take us many months to bring a monoclonal into the marketplace, and we don’t have the money today anyway,” Jha told CNN.

The administration is thinking about ways to get out of buying vaccines and therapy and selling it to consumers and insurers. But Jha says the process has to be guided by “the needs on the ground and the realities of the virus.”

According to him, the current reality necessitates that the government continue to have incentives in place to encourage the production of new therapies.

Fishing vessel tracking data can reveal the origins of SARS CoV-2 in bats: Evidence from the United Nations and the aging of the world

Sometimes fishing vessels reveal a lot of information when they hide their locations. A modelling study states that gaps in tracking data can suggest illegal activity. Sci. Adv. 8, eabq2109; 2022).

The team found that ships from Spain, the United States, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland were the ones that lost most of their time to be disabled. However, most vessels that use AIS come from middle- and upper-income countries.

The finding narrows the time between the ancestor of SARS‑CoV-2 originating in bats and the virus jumping to people. But it also highlights how difficult it will be to find the direct ancestor of SARS‑CoV-2 in bats, given how often coronaviruses recombine. The chances of finding a direct ancestor “are almost nil”, says Edward Holmes, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Sydney in Australia.

According to models from the United Nations (UN), the world’s population reached 8 billion on 15 November — a mere 12 years since it passed 7 billion, and less than a century after the planet supported just 2 billion people (see ‘People of the world’).

Although approximate, this could be the most reliable estimate that the UN has produced so far. The organization has changed how it analyses data, switching from five-yearly to annual intervals. And there has been a steady improvement in recent decades in the ability and capacity of many countries to collect statistics.

Since the end of the one-child policy in China, data from the country has been more reliable, which is a significant factor behind the UN’s updated forecast. According to the UN predictions, China’s population has already peaked and will go down until at least the end of the century.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03792-4

Remembering the Day of His Death: A Chinese Auto Dealer’s Tale of a Black Hole and its Implications for the Situation in the Middle East

Many countries that are experiencing humanitarian crises and conflicts like Syria and Yemen still have significant blind spots.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. If you sign up here you’ll be entered into a drawing.

Zhou, an auto dealer in northeastern China, last saw his father alive in a video chat on the afternoon of November 1, hours after their home on the far outskirts of Beijing was locked down.

He said Zhou’s parents and his son didn’t know about the Covid restrictions at the time, but the apartment building in which they lived did not have any cases.

Zhou’s father was denied immediate emergency medical help after he suddenly began struggling to breathe on the video call. Zhou and his son made a dozen calls for an ambulance, he said, claiming security guards blocked relatives from entering the building to take the 58-year-old grandfather to a hospital.

Migrant workers abandoned a locked-down factory and walked miles to escape an outbreak at the largest Apple assembling site. A 3-year-old boy died of gas poisoning in lockdown after he was blocked from being taken promptly to a hospital. A young girl died after a delay in medical care.

Zhou said he contacted several state media outlets in Beijing to report on his story, but no reporters came. Amid growing desperation and anger, he turned to foreign media – despite knowing the risk of repercussions from the government. CNN is only using his surname to mitigate that risk.

The Zhengzhou protests against zero-Covid: the heat of the public anger and the economic tolls that come with it

There were fights between security officers and employees at the world’s biggest iPhone assembly factory in the central city of Zhengzhou this week.

On Thursday, in the city of Chongqing, a resident delivered a speech about the Covid lockup on his residential compound. “Without freedom, I would rather die!” He shouted to a cheering crowd, who hailed him a hero, and wrestled him away from several police officers who tried to take him away.

Many Chinese football fans who have not been able to watch the World Cup at home because of restrictions have turned to the internet to show their displeasure.

“None of the fans are seen wearing face masks, or told to submit proof of Covid test results. Are they the same people as us? The Wechat article asked if the China’s insistence on zero-Covid went viral before it was censored.

Chinese officials are feeling the heat of the public discontent and the heavy social and economic tolls that come with that, according to some signs.

China ended its zero-covid policy this month despite protests over its heavy economic and social toll.

Many local officials are reverting back to a zero-tolerance approach to dealing with infections as soon as possible.

Mass testing had been canceled by the city of Shijiazhuang. Students could return to school after a long period of online classes. But as cases rose over the weekend, authorities reimposed a lockdown on Monday, telling residents to stay home.

On Tuesday, financial hub Shanghai banned anyone arriving in the city from entering venues including shopping malls, restaurants, supermarkets and gyms for five days. Authorities also shut down cultural and entertainment venues in half of the city.

The district of Haizhu where the protest took place has been locked down for the fifth time.

Out of all the restaurants in the capital, most were closed. Many businesses are having difficulty finding enough staff who haven’t gotten infected. Sanlitun, one of Beijing’s most popular shopping districts, was empty even after the anti-COVID-19 fences were taken down.

The low vaccination rates of the elderly has led to fears that the health system might not be able to deal with it. About two-thirds of people age 80 and older have received two doses, and only 40% have received a booster shot.

The government has not stated the goal of its policy, which could lead to confusion. The reopening measures will likely result in a messy and hasty transition process where local governments ditch all the zero- COVID measures without investing serious in preparing for the transition.

Chinese officials have denied that the guidelines listed in them were meant for a transition to living with the virus.

Adam Chen, a public health researcher at the University of Georgia, says the changes move China in the right direction. They try to balance the need to protect the most vulnerable people from infection, while also reducing the economic and social harms of lockdowns, he says.

Back on the outskirts of Beijing, Zhou said while the zero-Covid policy “is beneficial to the majority,” its implementation at a local level had been too draconian.

I want things like this not to happen again in China and all over the world, he said. I lost a father. My son is without a grandpa. I am angry now.

China’s Zero-Covid Relaxation Reaction intl-hnk: How it’s going to change the world, and what’s happening?

The Chinese government implemented a change in the way it cares for its people and dismantled some of the physical signs of the zero- Covid controls.

But as many residents expressed relief and happiness at the obvious loosening of measures, some worried about its impact and questioned how the new rules would be rolled out.

The world has changed overnight, and that is really amazing according to the manager at the tech company in Beijing. “I feel like we are getting back to normal life. This is important to me because if I don’t get back to a normal life, I might lose my mind.”

How can it change so quickly? Ding asked. “It gives me the feeling that we are like fools. It’s all up to them. I feel like they said it was good, so then it was really good. I have no choice, it’s so incredible. All I can do is follow the arrangement.”

David Wang, 33, a freelancer in Shanghai, said although the changes were welcome, they had also sparked a feeling of disbelief in the city, which underwent a chaotic, more than two-month-long, citywide lockdown earlier this year.

I was happy for the changes, but some of my friends are showing signs of being traumatized by it, they can’t believe it’s happening.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/china/china-zero-covid-relaxation-reaction-intl-hnk/index.html

What to do if Covid-19 is out of control: China’s response to the outbreak and public perception of Omicron has been troubling

Top health officials in Beijing on Wednesday said the changes to the rules were based on scientific evidence, including the spread of the comparatively milder Omicron variant, the vaccination rate, and China’s level of experience in responding to the virus.

The changes that have recently been made are a sudden about-face for a government long bent on limiting the number of infections. Despite slight policy revisions and cautions against overreach last month, the central government was not preparing for an imminent shift in its national strategy until last week.

The government and state media had long emphasized the dangers of the virus and its potential long-term effects – and used this to justify the maintenance of restrictive policies.

Now, a flood of articles highlighting the more mild nature of Omicron and downplaying its risks have created a feeling of whiplash for some, and fall well short of the kind of public messaging campaigns that some other countries carried out before their own pandemic policy changes.

There were numerous reports of panic buying of fever medications on China’s heavily moderated social media platform, Weibo, on Thursday when the topic of what to do if infections by Omicron trended high.

Adam Chen says that the government should provide better guidance on how to handle an increase in infections. “It will test the resilience of the Chinese health system.”

Bob Li, the graduate student who tested positive for the viruses on Friday, had his mother worried about him so she stayed up all night worrying about him. “She finds the virus a very, very scary thing,” Li said.

People in cosmopolitan cities are more likely to support relaxing rules in China, as younger people fear the impact of Covid-19 within the country.

Covid-19 Detection in China: Implications for Public Health, Primary Care, and Business in the Era of a Critical Reopening

Wang’s mother was preparing for the possibility of a nuclear winter and buying high quality N95 masks, while he was away.

Already there has been some contradiction in how the guidelines are implemented as local authorities adjust – and many are watching to see the impact in their cities.

If you have a negative Covid-19 test, your health code may still be needed for dining in at restaurants or some entertainment venues, according to Beijing authorities.

Hao, in Beijing, said on Wednesday evening that her health code had turned yellow – which would usually bar her from entering most public places, until she queued up for another test that returned a negative result. She knew the new rules would allow her to go out a lot, but instead she stayed at home and waited.

Protests in a number of cities against the strict lockdowns led to the announcement. Those led some cities to loosen some restrictions on testing and movement, but the new guidelines go further.

But researchers say some aspects of the new rules are ambiguous and open to interpretation by local governments, including when and where to test people during an outbreak, what defines high-risk areas and how to manage them.

The experts said that the virus could spread to China’s vast rural areas where vaccine rates are low and lack of medical resources are severe.

Some studies have estimated China’s abrupt and under-prepared reopening could lead to nearly a million deaths – close to the Covid death toll of the US.

China doesn’t have a strong system for primary medical care system, such as a network of general practitioners, so people go to hospital for mild conditions, says Xi Chen, who hopes more details on how the government plans to triage care will emerge in the coming days.

Without additional support, the eased restrictions might not help businesses to recover from protracted lockdowns or remove the social stigma attached to COVID-19, says Joy Zhang, a sociologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. “I’m afraid that the health and socio-economic risk will be passed on to individuals.”

Urgent guidance is needed on how to curb transmission during a surge, such as through mask mandates, work-from-home policies and temporary school closures, says Cowling. Because of the reduction in testing, it’s not clear how officials will be able to know if the wave of infections is over or not.

Changes continued Monday as authorities announced a deactivation of the “mobile itinerary card” health tracking function planned for the following day.

The system uses people’s cell phone data to try to identify people who have been to a high-risk city by looking at their travel history over the last 14 days.

Beijing has some of the best medical resources in the country. However, the abrupt zero-Covid u-turn has left people and health facilities ill-prepared to deal with a surge in infections.

Media outlet China Youth Daily documented hours-long lines at a clinic in central Beijing on Friday, and cited unnamed experts calling for residents not to visit hospitals unless necessary.

A hospital official on Saturday appealed to residents with mild or no symptoms to not call the city’s emergency services line because of a surge in calls.

The daily volume of emergency calls had surged from its usual 5,000 to more than 30,000 in recent days, Chen Zhi, chief physician of the Beijing Emergency Center said, according to official media.

State media coverage of Covid-19: China’s response to the recent Pandemic, and the challenges it may pose for future health care systems

In an interview with state media Saturday, a top Covid-19 expert said that Covid was spreading rapidly and was driven by Omicron variant in China.

” It will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain regardless of how strong the prevention and control is,” said Zhong who has been a key public voice during the Pandemic in 2020.

It is difficult to gauge the extent of the spread because official data is now meaningless, as many people have shifted their use of tests at home.

Outside experts have warned that China may be underprepared to handle the expected surge of cases, after the surprise move to lift its measures in the wake of nationwide protests against the policy, growing case numbers and rising economic costs.

Increasing the number of intensive care wards and beds, enhancing medical staff for intensive care and setting up more clinics for infectious diseases are some of the measures to be undertaken by China.

Meanwhile, experts have warned a lack of experience with the virus – and years of state media coverage focusing on its dangers and impact overseas, before a recent shift in tone – could push those who are not in critical need to seek medical care, further overwhelming systems.

The China market watchdog said on Friday that there was a “temporary shortage” of some hot-selling drugs, while a major online retailer says it is taking steps to ensure stable supplies after sales of certain medications surged 18 times.

A hashtag trending on China’s heavily moderated social media platform Weibo over the weekend featured a state media interview with a Beijing doctor saying people who tested positive for Covid-19 but had no or mild symptoms did not need to take medication to recover.

“People with asymptomatic inflections do not need medication at all. It’s enough to rest at home and still have a good mood. The interview with the chief infectious disease doctor at Beijing You An Hospital was viewed more than four hundred million times.

COVID-19 report from Beijing suspended after a sharp reduction in anti-virus testing and panic buying in the country’s main hospitals — a crowd gathered in a line

BEIJING (AP) — China’s National Health Commission scaled down its daily COVID-19 report starting Wednesday in response to a sharp decline in PCR testing since the government eased anti-virus measures after daily cases hit record highs.

A notice on the commission’s website said it stopped publishing daily figures on numbers of COVID-19 cases where no symptoms are detected since it was “impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infected persons,” which have generally accounted for the vast majority of new infections. The only numbers they’re reporting are confirmed cases detected in public testing facilities.

The sudden lifting of restrictions sparked panic buying of cold and febrile drugs, which led to shortages at pharmacy and online shopping platforms. Long lines have become common at hospital wards in Beijing and elsewhere in the country.

At the China-Japan Friendship Hospital’s fever clinic in Beijing, a dozen people waited for nucleic acid test results. The nurses are wearing protective gear and are checking patients one by one.

A few kilometers (miles) south, at Chaoyang Hospital, about a dozen people waited in a line of blue tents, deflecting winds amid subzero temperatures. One person in the queue took out a bottle of disinfectant and sprayed it around her as she waited.

At the Gaoji Baikang Pharmacy, several people were waiting in line for cough medication and Chinese herbal remedies. A sign at the front told waiting customers: “Avoid panic and hoarding, we are doing all we can to stock up to fulfill your medicinal needs.” A man was coming out and saying that he had bought two packages of a Chinese herbal remedy and that only one person could buy more than that.

Chinese Covid-19 epidemic is back with a vengeance: funding constraints for COVID-19 machine translation in the U.S. and China

The Chinese government defended the accuracy of their official tally by revealing that it had changed its method of counting Covid deaths.

Since Tuesday, the U.S. consulates in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang and the central city of Wuhan have been offering only emergency services “in response to increased number of COVID-19 cases,” the State Department said.

Hospitals and distribution points were struggling to remain staffed because of a shortage of China’s ubiquitous motorized tricycle delivery drivers.

Students from Chinese universities will be able to finish the semester from home in order to reduce the chance of a bigger COVID-19 outbreak during January’s travel rush.

The move followed the government’s announcement that it was ending most of the strictest measures, following three years of strict virus restrictions.

Protesters in Shanghai demanded that the most powerful and authoritarian leader in decades step down.

But some researchers worry that the funding that paid for SARS-CoV-2 sequencing will dry up and new machines will sit idle. Many countries have the ability to sequence other pathogens but aren’t doing so because there isn’t a lot of money “I’m a bit sceptical about how much we will be able to advance this.”

Every country has a different set of priorities. Some are driven by disease outbreaks that had decreased or been neglected during the pandemic, says Neelika Malavige, an immunologist who heads the dengue programme at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative and is based in Colombo. “Dengue is back with a vengeance this year.”

Many people have been trained in how to interpret COVID-19 data but do not know how to apply it to other diseases. “There’s still a global paucity of trained workforce.”

Researchers are concerned that donor and government investment in genome research will stop. Philanthropic funders typically don’t support long-term surveillance, says Senjuti Saha, a molecular microbiologist at the Child Health Research Foundation in Dhaka.

Sequencing machines also cost tens of thousands of dollars each year to maintain. And the reagents required are expensive; they can also cost more in regions without established supply chains, says Pronyk, who says solving the distribution gaps will be a priority for Asia PGI.

David said in some places it can take months to get a technician to fix a broken machine. Work is also needed to develop standardized processes for sequencing pathogens other than SARS-CoV-2 and to bring the costs of sequencing down, say researchers.

China’s Public-Health System Can Prevent and Prevent Diseases by Pushing a Fourth Dose of the Vaccine

The study suggests that if 85% of the population gets a fourth dose of a vaccine other than the inactivated-virus vaccines most people in the country have received, it could slow the rise in infections and reduce the number of severe infections and deaths. If fourth vaccine doses are pushed together with giving antiviral drugs to people aged 60 and older and other people at high-risk of developing serious disease, deaths could be reduced by up to 34%.

The curve is never too late to be flattened, according to an economist who studies China’s public-health system.

The estimates do not take into account excess deaths because of delays in treating people with non-COVID-19 diseases.

If certain measures are brought in by China the model predicts that the total number of deaths will be reduced to over 220,000 by April. These involve reimposing restrictions, high rates of third- and fourth-dose vaccination and high antiviral drug treatment for at-risk groups. Widespread mask use can lower deaths to around 230,000. Mokdad said that people in ChinaAdherence to masking is high and the changes in behavior have resulted from the easing of restrictions. They won’t let it rip.

There are broadly agreed upon mortality estimates and the impact of interventions. herd immunity is only achieved after a large spread of transmission throughout the country, according to this similarity in large part.

The figures were presented in the meeting of the National Health Commission in China according to two outlets, which cited sources who were involved in the discussions. The summary said the meeting dealt with the treatment of patients affected by the new outbreak.

On Friday, a copy of what was purportedly the NHC meeting notes was circulated on Chinese social media and seen by CNN; the authenticity of the document has not been verified and the NHC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Financial Times reported that it was Sun Yang, a deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who gave the figures to the officials.

The Nature of Covid Deaths: Implications for Universal Inia Vaccine Updates and the Future of the Immunization Strategy

The figures are in stark contrast to the public data of the NHC, which reported just 62,592 symptomatic Covid cases in the first twenty days of December.

Wang Guiqiang, an infectious disease doctor, told a news conference that the deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure are only classified as Covid deaths, according to the latest NHC guidelines.

The minutes of the Wednesday closed-door NHC meeting made no reference to discussions concerning how many people may have died in China, according to both reports and the document CNN viewed.

We’ll see this pattern if this evolutionary trajectory continues. It is the same as the seasonal coronaviruses that cause epidemics. A 2021 study by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that coronaviruses gradually evolve over time, so prior immunity is less effective.

There are a number of data that teams use when it comes to selecting inia vaccine, from the growth rates of circulating variant in genes to the immunological properties. There are different populations exposed to and variability in what they are exposed to. Some countries might have more immunity than others and hence variant that can dodge it has an advantage. We often see different influenza viruses dominating in different continents and countries.

There is hope that by the year 2020, there will be a vaccine for coronaviruses, which will be very effective against a wide range of versions. The history of development suggests that success is not guaranteed for other universal vaccines. As a result, the coming year will be the start of a long game of cat-and-mouse, pitting vaccine updates against an evolving virus. Solving this prediction question—and rolling out the resulting vaccines—will be one of the major health challenges of 2023.

The Beijing Distribution of Pfizer’s Covid-19 Drug, Predictions from a Local Emergency Room in the Xicheng District

According to state media, Beijing will begin distribution of Pfizer’s Covid-19 drug Paxlovid in the coming days.

The China News Service reported Monday that after receiving training, community doctors will give instructions on how to use medicine to Covid-19 patients.

“We have received the notice from officials, but it is not clear when the drugs will arrive,” it cited a worker at a local community health center in Beijing’s Xicheng district as saying.

A Beijing emergency room doctor told a state-run newspaper on Thursday that his colleagues didn’t have time to eat or drink. “We have been seeing patients nonstop,” he said.

The doctor told the newspaper that even though he was sick, he had still been working. “The number of patients is high, and with fewer medical staff, the pressure is multiplied,” said the doctor.

In a sign of the strain on Beijing’s medical system hundreds of health professionals from across China have traveled to the city to assist medical centers

For many Chinese nationals abroad, who have been unable to return or unwilling to endure the lengthy quarantine, the news meant they could finally go home — a bittersweet victory after much sacrifice.

Though largely closed to foreigners, the border is open for a limited number of business and family visits, according to the government.

How Did May Ma Go Home During the China Border Quarantine Exposure? A State of the Art, a Memorino

The Chinese national who has been in New York for the last four years said that everyone can live their normal lives. She said the separation was difficult, and several of her family members and her beloved pet dog had died during it.

My family did not attend my graduation. She said they missed a lot of things. I missed many things with my family. All my friends, they got married during the pandemic. Even some of them had babies. I feel like I missed many important points in their lives.

May Ma has not been able to go home for nearly three years. The worst thing about the quarantine requirements had been worrying about her grandparents’ health, and not knowing if she’d be able to return in time to say goodbye if anything were to happen, she said.

Throughout the pandemic, “the scariest thing was … not knowing where the end is, not knowing when I can go back,” she said. I can finally see the end, I feel very happy.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-border-quarantine-travel-reax-intl-hnk/index.html

The Number of Outbound Flights and Hotels in China since the Covid Abundance Announced on December 31, 2011 During the New Year

Those within China are also celebrating and anticipating outbound travel. Most have not left the country for several years and are now flooding booking sites to plan long-awaited vacations.

Trips.com, a Chinese travel booking website, saw an increase in online searches for outbound flights and overseas hotels over the last three years. Within half an hour of the announcement, the searches for popular destinations increased ten times, with many people looking for outbound group tours during the New Year holiday season.

Macao, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, the United States, and the UK were all among the fastest growing destinations on the website since the announcement.

The abandonment of zero-Covid in China has resulted in a flood of cases. When CNN visited a Beijing crematorium last week, cars lined up to enter, filled with grieving family members who had been waiting more than a day to cremate loved ones who died of Covid.

A Chinese national in New York said that he feels like it is a mess. Everybody is sick. So, at least I think right now, it’s not the best time to visit my family. Maybe two or three months later.

The Most Hard Year of Xi’s Rule: A Challenge to the Italian Economy, Social Security, and Public Health Systems in the Confronting Western Europe

Some overseas destinations are also on guard. Officials in Italy’s northern Lombardy region have asked Milan’s Malpensa airport — one of the country’s largest international airports — to conduct PCR tests for all arrivals from China from now until the end of January.

“It doesn’t matter if I can get back in time for Spring Festival,” said Ma in South Korea, referring to Lunar New Year. “There is hope after all, I can bear waiting for a little while longer.”

It was supposed to be a year of celebration for China, as it marked the second decade of the reign of the leader, who promised to restore the nation to greatness.

Instead, China had its most difficult year under Xi’s rule as it reeled from his costly zero-Covid policy – from months of overzealous enforcement that crushed the economy and stoked historic public discontent, to a wholesale abandonment so abrupt that left a fragile health system scrambling to cope with an explosion of cases.

The tightly sealed Olympic bubble, the face masks, the endless spraying of disinfectant and the rigorous daily testing paid off. The Winter Olympics in Canada were unaffected by Covid because all the infections of visitors arriving in the country were immediately identified and their cases contained.

The success added to the party’s narrative that its political system is superior to those of Western democracies in handling the pandemic – a message Xi had repeatedly driven home as he prepared for a third term in power.

And so instead of vaccinating the elderly and bolstering ICU capacity, authorities wasted the next crucial months building larger quarantine facilities, rolling out more frequent mass testing, and imposing wider lockdowns that at one point affected more than 300 million people.

Then, in late November, a deadly apartment fire in the western city of Urumqi finally ignited public anger that had been simmering for months. Many believed lockdown measures had hampered rescue efforts, despite official denials.

There were protests in the country on a larger scale than have been seen before. Crowds gathered on campus and in major cities to call for the end of Covid tests and lockdowns as well as demands for greater political freedom.

The nationwide demonstrations posed an unprecedented challenge to Xi. By that point, Omicron had spun out of control, and the strain on the economy was too much for local governments to handle.

The abruptness and carelessness of the easing of restrictions has left the public without a clue as to its true nature, and left them to fend for themselves.

The credibility of the government that justified years of painful restrictions in order to save lives has been dealt a serious blow by the true scale of the outbreak.

COVID Detection and Travel Requirements in the Presence of Anomalous Events in the U.S.

Passengers also flying through South Korea’s Incheon International Airport, Toronto Pearson International, and Vancouver International will be required to provide a negative test if they have been in China in the last 10 days.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced a measure that will effect all passengers over the age of 2. Passengers on direct flights must have a positive test within two days of their departure, while passengers on indirect flights must have a test within one day of departure.

But the decreased population-wide surveillance outside China makes it more likely that a variant that emerges in China might initially go undetected, says Hill.

Most of the passengers travelling are from the Special Administrative Regions, according to the CDC.

The US is expanding its voluntarygenomic testing program in order to detect new and rare COVID variants. The CDC is adding Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Los Angeles International to bring the total number of airports participating in the program to seven.

“During the initial weeks of the Omicron surge, TGS detected two Omicron subvariants, BA.2 and BA.3, and reported them to the global database weeks before they were reported elsewhere, demonstrating that the program is able to detect variants early,” the CDC said.

The director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases said that it was a worry. TheCDC recently announced that people coming from China will have to be tested and negative before they can enter the country.

He doesn’t think we’ll get much benefit from the travel requirements. “The most important thing we need right now is, we need the Chinese to have more transparency and tell us exactly what’s going on, and that is pretty much a diplomatic decision. This is about diplomacy.”

The Covid epidemic in the United States is still progressing, and we need more information on the country’s infection history – a case study

The more cases you have, the more likely you are to get a variant of it, and this is also true for Covid as well as for many other viruses.

When millions of infections in China start to emerge, there are more chances for the virus to pick up a random variant that might be useful in infecting people. The Chinese population has not been as good at putting boosters in their population as other countries have been and this is why there is probably a lower amount of immunity in the population.

She said that we need more information about the nation’s sequence to make it easier for us to do deeper analyses. The data of differentInfluenza Viruses are available to be accessed through a global initiative called gisAID.

“These latest data provide a snapshot of the evolution of the Omicron variants and shows that these most recently shared sequences from China are closely related to variants that have been circulating for some time,” according to the GISAID Data Science Initiative.

The US is in a relatively stable state of covid-19 right now but the nation still sees about 350 deaths each day from the disease.

The World Health Organization has accused China of “under-representing” the severity of its Covid outbreak and criticized its “narrow” definition of what constitutes a Covid death, as top global health officials urge Beijing to share more data about the explosive spread.

After a major outbreak ripped across China last month due to relaxed disease controls, WHO officials have become more vocal about their demand for reliable information as they grapple with tight data access in China.

There, the outbreak has overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums, triggered shortages of basic medicines, and sparked fears of an even darker month ahead as experts warn of a spread to less resourced rural areas during the upcoming Lunar New Year.

The COVID crisis: warning signs for the landscape of genetic tests in the coming era of transparency, a UN health official said on a statement

On Wednesday, the European Union “strongly encouraged” its member states to introduce a requirement for a negative Covid test for passengers traveling from China to the EU, according to a statement released by the Swedish presidency of the bloc.

The WHO’s Tedros said Wednesday it was “understandable” that some countries were taking these steps, “with circulation in China so high and comprehensive data not forthcoming.”

The group and the WHO keep stressing the need for more forthcoming data. The latest situation adds to longstanding challenges for the UN body, which faced criticism at the start of the pandemic that it did not push China hard enough for data, amid concerns Beijing was obscuring critical information. Beijing has defended transparency on many occasions.

A representative sample of Viruses from across the Community was said to be done by most nations. In a study that he co-authored the researchers said countries should aim to sequence a small percentage of the COVID cases and share those data within 21 days. That would give them a 34% probability of detecting a new lineage before it infects 100 people3.

But the testing landscape has changed drastically over the past year, says evolutionary virologist Verity Hill at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut. Researchers could use samples collected at community-basedPCR testing facilities in order to conduct population-based screening in the United Kingdom. In many countries, authorities no longer offer such services because of the expense and the decrease in demand. And people are increasingly opting to self-test, using rapid antigen tests, or not test at all.

The main focus of the body’s immune response is the spike Protein which allows the paralysing Viruses to enter host cells. It is a good idea to watch out for a big jump in the number of changes in a new variant. “That’s a warning flag,” she says. The Omicron variant, which first appeared in a sequence from Botswana, had more than 30 mutations in its spike protein.

The Delta variant was designated a variant of concern in May 2021, seven months after the first known sample was collected in India. The first sign that there could be a concerning new variant around was a rapid rise in case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths in India at the start of 2021. It is connecting case counts and genetics as much as possible.