Since March 1, when the outbreak caused by the contagious omicron variant had already begun, Shanghai has already accumulated more than 500,000 symptomatic and asymptomatic infections. among its 25 million inhabitants.
(Read: Covid in China: panic purchases and massive tests due to the rebound in cases)
This Monday, the number of new positives, symptomatic or asymptomatic, fell 12.7% from the previous day, to 16,980the decrease being especially pronounced in the number of patients with symptoms, which fell by a third.
(You are interested in: Shanghai: they put alarms in houses of those infected by covid-19)
However, the number of deaths continues to grow: on Monday, 52 covid deaths were recorded in the city, one more than the day before, so the total number of deaths since the start of the outbreak amounts to 190.
Local authorities announced on Monday another round of PCR tests for the 25 million residents with the aim of curbing the contagion curve “as quickly as possible”.
During a press conference held on Tuesday, the Shanghai Government explained that the logistics situation has progressed: “Imports of products from other provinces have improved” and the new logistics organization “It makes it easier to bring fresh products to the city,” declared government representatives.
However, they pointed to some still-existing problems, such as “warehouse closures”, “short availability of some products” and “potential cold supply chain disruptions”, while pointing to a shift in demand for the inhabitants, which has gone from “essential products” to more diverse ones such as “drinks”.
Resident complaints have also changed since the start of the lockdown. In the last days, the controversy in Shanghai is the erection of huge green fences – about two meters high– in residential complexes in which positive cases have been detected to prevent residents from leaving their homes, with the danger they represent in case of fire.
While most countries lift restrictions and decide to live with the virus, China sticks to its strict prevention policy against covid-19, which consists of an almost total closure of borders, the isolation of all those infected in quarantine centers and massive PCR tests and limitation of movements wherever a case is detected.
According to official accounts, since the start of the pandemic, 205,257 people have been infected in the country and 4,828 have died.
What is the balance?
The low mortalityonly 190 deaths for more than half a million people infected– of the wave of covid-19 that registers Shanghai, the largest city in China, intrigues many experts.
The Asian giant has contained the balance to less than 5,000 fatalities since the detection of the coronavirus at the end of 2019 in the city of Wuhan, in the center of the country. As for confirmed infections, they rise to 200,000 symptomatic cases and 470,000 asymptomatic according to official balances.
Shanghai, the most punished city in the country for the omicron variant, registers a mortality rate of 0.036%, that is, 36 deaths per 100,000 infected since March 1. The rate is lower than that of countries that have become an example of managing the pandemic, such as New Zealand (0.07%).
If Shanghai had had the same fatality rate as the oceanic country, the metropolis would have had “more than 300 dead,” epidemiologist Michael Baker of New Zealand’s Otago University said skeptically.
prabhat jhaan epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, said that the mortality of the current outbreak could be “a very high number” given the large number of unvaccinated older people and the low efficiency rate of the immunizers used in the country.
THEY ARE FORCED TO QUARANTINE FOR TESTING POSITIVE FOR COVID-19
Covid-19 positive citizens of Shanghai, China, are forcibly transferred by the city authorities, to keep them in quarantine, in isolation centers installed by the city government. pic.twitter.com/bYiGB4msb5
– Campechana opinion (@opinacampeche) April 26, 2022
What is the explanation?
Since the beginning of the epidemic, China has followed a covid-zero strategy based on early lockdowns when cases and massive tests are detected to identify all those infected and isolate them.
This method makes it possible to “limit the contagion as much as possible” and “avoid” a saturation of medical resources that would cause more deaths, estimated the epidemiologist Wu Zunyou, one of the figures in the fight against COVID-19 in China.
Repeated large-scale screening of part of the population also increases “the chances of detecting (early) asymptomatic” or mild cases, according to Singapore-based virologist Leong Hoe Nam.
According to this theory, the distortion would not be due to the mortality figure but to that of officially detected infections, which would be higher thanks to its strategy to combat the pandemic.
The part of truth
Even so, there is still a gap between the cases identified and the people who end up sick and die.
In Wuhan, the first city confined at the beginning of the pandemic, the authorities subsequently revised the number of fatalities to increase it by 50%.
Another explanation may be the “very strict classification criteria for covid-19-related deaths”said Paul Tambyah, president of the Asia-Pacific Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infection. According to this criterion, people with previous pathologies that are aggravated by covid-19 are not included in the official balance if they die after being cured of the virus.
In other countries, the count is broader. The United Kingdom, for example, includes as a victim of the virus anyone who has died within 28 days of testing positive, “including victims of road accidents,” Tambyah said.
The figures in China are “very political,” says the infectologist Mai He, from the University of Washington. Especially in this crisis in which the communist power has tried to present its management of the pandemic as proof of the superiority of its authoritarian political system against the deadly balance sheets of many Western democracies.
Unaccounted for cases
China is “timid” about the mortality figures, he told AFP Ariel Karlinsky, WHO adviser at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Comparing the number of deaths from any cause in China since 2020 and comparing it with the years preceding the pandemic would give a fairer view of the situation, this expert estimated.
But these figures are not public and were only communicated in detail to “selected researchers”, he lamented.
The Beijing case
Finally, Beijing announced massive tests in 11 of its 16 districts after detecting 22 positive cases of covid in the last few hours, while the eastern metropolis of Shanghai has begun to bend the contagion curve and works against the clock to test all its inhabitants.
On Monday, more than 3.7 million inhabitants of the central Beijing district of Chaoyang, the most populous in the city and the place where the first positives of this outbreak were detected, carried out PCR tests, the district official announced today at a press conference. Yang Beibei.
Beijing launched mass coronavirus testing for nearly all of its 21 million residents on Tuesday, as fears grew that the Chinese capital could be subjected to a strict Shanghai-like lockdown. pic.twitter.com/lyoJyXdWxj
— Spanish euronews (@euronewses) April 26, 2022
The tests in Chaoyang were carried out by mixing samples from five or ten people in each tube.a method frequently used in China to speed up results in mass testing, and only one of those containers returned a positive.
The city extended the campaign to ten districts and a special development zone on Monday night, which have a total of 20 million inhabitants, who will undergo three PCR tests between April 26 and 30, they explained last night The authorities.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With AFP and Efe
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