A new report part-funded by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention warns Beijing to rapidly roll out booster shots and antiviral drugs as well as enforce social controls if the country is to avoid a Covid-19 death toll of close to 1mn people.
President Xi Jinping last week abandoned his zero-Covid strategy of mass testing, quarantines, citywide lockdowns and fastidious electronic contact tracing. The decision has unleashed China’s biggest uncontrolled wave of coronavirus cases since the pandemic started in Wuhan nearly three years ago.
According to the research paper, authored by three University of Hong Kong professors, China can reduce the death toll during the reopening phase to 448 to 530 people per million. Given China’s population of 1.4bn people, the modelling implies a best-case scenario of about 627,200 to 742,000 deaths.