China has meanwhile turned away from the zero-Covid strategy - but warnings are still being given of a corona infection. After all, hundreds of thousands of dead are threatened, clinics are experiencing a rush. The Chinese model expert is now making an unconventional proposal.
According to its most renowned epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan, China should simply call Covid-19 the "corona cold". According to the party-affiliated newspaper Global Times, the reason given by the government adviser was that the infection after virus mutations in the past two years mainly affected the upper respiratory tract and less than before the lungs.
At 0.1 percent, Covid-19 also has a death rate similar to that of the usual flu. Nevertheless, efforts must be made to avoid severe cases. After Chinese experts had repeatedly warned of the dangers of the corona virus and the consequential damage for infected people as part of the strict zero-Covid strategy that was lifted a week ago, the severity of the disease has been noticeably downplayed since the change of course.
According to a new Hong Kong study, however, China is threatened with easing the number of deaths by several hundred thousand - depending on how quickly boosters are vaccinated and how strong public and social health measures are taken. A corona wave has been rolling over the most populous country for weeks, which the previous hard zero-Covid measures such as lockdowns, forced quarantine and mass tests were ultimately no longer able to contain. That is why, according to World Health Organization (WHO) emergency aid coordinator Mike Ryan, China has also lifted the zero-Covid policy. The intensive spread therefore began long before the reversal and not as a result of the easing.
There is no precise picture of the situation because there are no longer any reliable figures. One thing is clear: people are getting sick in droves, hospitals are experiencing a rush. Authorities are calling for people to cure Covid-19 at home. Fever and cold medicines are sold out in many pharmacies. According to Zhong Nanshan, the particularly easily transmissible omicron variant BF.7 is spreading in the north of Beijing and the surrounding province of Hebei - a sub-variant of BA.5.2, which is more common in the south and south-west of the country in metropolitan areas such as Guangzhou and Chongqing.
