On video: Protest against the Corona restrictions in Shanghai, China (Reuters)
The chaos of the spread of the corona virus in China could put the rest of the world back to square one in the fight against the epidemic, warn experts around the world.
The overcrowded hospitals and morgues that have filled up since Beijing changed its controversial zero-contagion policy last month and opened everything up.
The dark forecasts estimate that up to a million people may die from the virus in the coming months.
And that's not all.
Experts warn that the new outbreak, possibly the largest of its kind, which shows no signs of slowing down, may have global implications - for the entire world.
The Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, even said that "the World Health Organization is very concerned about the developing situation in China, with increasing reports of serious diseases". ?
Just this week, documents leaked from the deliberations of China's National Health Commission (NHC) revealed that, contrary to the official data, which show a daily infection of several thousand people, last Tuesday alone approximately 37 million people were infected, the Bloomberg network reported.
By the way, the official number was 3,049 new infections reported that day.
And although in China it is claimed that there has been no death from Corona in recent days - the estimates are that more than 5,000 people die there every day.
Reuters quoted estimates from the government's supreme health authority that stated that approximately 248 million people, which is almost 18 percent of the population, were infected with the virus in the first 20 days of December.
British health data company Airfinity estimated last week that China was experiencing more than a million infections a day.
On Friday, a local health official in Qingdao reported that the city was seeing "between 490,000 and 530,000" new cases of corona a day.
Zhang Wengong, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, told local media that China "is expected to reach a peak of confirmed cases within a week."
According to him, "the peak will also increase the rate of seriously ill patients, and this will have a certain effect on all medical resources," he said, adding that the wave will continue for another month or two.
What is really happening in China?
Documentation of an ambulance driver from China (photo: official website, Edi Shapira)
And despite, or rather because of these data, China's National Health Commission has stopped publishing daily data on the corona, amid concerns about the reliability of the data after a meteoric increase in the amount of infections following the easing of severe restrictions.
"Relevant information regarding Covid will be published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention for reference and research," the committee said in a statement, without specifying the reasons for the change or how often the public will be updated with new information about the coronavirus in the country.
In addition, last week the health authorities in China announced that they will now only report on infected people who have developed symptoms, and not on asymptomatic carriers of the virus, and at the same time, China narrowed its definition of death from corona, counting only the deaths caused by pneumonia or respiratory failure caused by corona.
Is this the biggest eruption in history?
Although some believe that the Omicron BF.7 substrain thought to be behind the current outbreak is not a real threat, as most of the West is already vaccinated against these strains, meaning the population has a natural immunity.
In contrast, other experts warn of what is in front of us.
"For nearly three years, in China they maintained a strict enforcement policy and an attempt to keep the number of people infected with the corona to a minimum and the morbidity to a minimum. This policy was relevant in the first year, when the virus was unknown and there was no effective preventive treatment. But while in other countries they moved to a situation of living alongside the virus - the accessible Vaccines, test options and treatments for all who need it. In China, the "zero infections" policy remains, which has become less and less realistic to enforce, and they are experiencing an unprecedented outbreak, perhaps the largest in history," says immunologist Dr. Erez Garti, head of science communication at the Davidson Institute for Science Education.
According to him, it is difficult to know what the exact numbers are, since the unofficial reports are based on leaks, but what is clear now is the high cost of uncontrolled morbidity in a population that has not been exposed to the disease.
He adds that "while in the West they chose vaccines that went through controlled clinical trials and their effectiveness is clear and reported, in China they chose self-made vaccines with lesser effectiveness and it is not clear how much of the population is vaccinated."
The meaning of these two figures is many more sick people, and the small percentage that deteriorates into a serious illness is expected to become very large numbers.
"One of the problems with uncontrolled mass infection is the appearance of new variants. This is something that is almost inevitable. In every infection there is a small chance that the virus will change, and a tiny chance that it will change in a way that makes it more contagious or stealthy. This is a risk that always exists in every infection. When hundreds of millions of people If a person gets infected, this risk becomes much more significant if only because of the large numbers. We saw it last winter in most of the world and in Israel and we will see it this winter in China as well - it is almost inevitable."
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