17.02.2023
A meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee chaired by Xi Jinping summed up the epidemic prevention work and said that China’s epidemic prevention and control had achieved a “significant and decisive victory.” The international academic research cited by the “New York Times” shows that within two months after abandoning the “clearing” policy, the number of deaths from the new crown in China was between 1 million and 1.5 million.
(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) According to Xinhua News Agency, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting on February 16 to hear a recent report on the prevention and control of the new crown epidemic. Xi Jinping presided over the meeting and delivered a speech.
The meeting praised the CCP-led fight against the epidemic over the past three years. Pointing out that since November 2022, the government has “continuously optimized and adjusted prevention and control measures, and achieved a stable transition in epidemic prevention and control in a relatively short period of time”, more than 200 million people have been diagnosed and treated, nearly 800,000 severe patients have been effectively treated, and the death rate of the new crown has remained unchanged. At the lowest level in the world, “a major and decisive victory in the prevention and control of the epidemic has been achieved, creating a miracle in the history of human civilization that a country with a large population successfully emerged from the pandemic.”
The press release of the meeting stated, “Practice has proved that the Party Central Committee’s major judgments on the epidemic situation, major decisions on prevention and control work, and major adjustments to prevention and control strategies are completely correct. Huge.” The meeting also emphasized that the current national epidemic has steadily entered the stage of normalized prevention and control of “Class B and B management”.
Political situation |
30.01.2023
France cancels nucleic acid testing requirement
In view of the gradual slowdown of the epidemic situation in China, some countries that have imposed quarantine measures on incoming passengers from China since the beginning of the year have loosened restrictions. The French embassy in China announced on February 17 that France no longer requires travelers from China to show a negative nucleic acid test certificate within 48 hours before boarding the plane, and the spot check after landing is also cancelled.
Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore have also relaxed entry restrictions on Chinese tourists. A week ago, the South Korean government announced the resumption of issuing short-term visas to Chinese tourists. From this Saturday, China will also resume issuing short-term visas to South Korean tourists. South Korean Prime Minister Han Deok-soo said South Korea and China will increase the number of flights between the two countries from 62 to 80 a week by the end of this month, Yonhap News Agency reported on Friday. Last month, China and Japan resumed issuing short-term visas to each other.
“COVID-19 kills 1-1.5 million in China”
So far, the official death toll from the new crown in China is still very low, as of February 9，83,150 coronavirus-related deaths in hospital。But that’s just COVID-19 patients who died in hospital. And experts believe that hospital deaths may still account for only a small fraction of the overall death toll. In addition, China’s definition of COVID-19 death is very narrow. A large number of people who died of underlying diseases other than “pneumonia” or “respiratory failure”, or patients who have not undergone nucleic acid testing, are not included in the statistics of COVID-19 deaths. This method of division and statistics has been questioned and criticized internationally by professional organizations including the WHO.
The New York Times this week, citing estimates from four unrelated academic teams, came to broadly similar conclusions: The coronavirus outbreak in China may have killed between 1 million and 1.5 million people.
Studies cited by the newspaper, including an estimate last year by Fudan University scientists using data from a previous wave of Omicron outbreaks in Shanghai, concluded that ending the “clearing” policy could overwhelm the health care system, killing an estimated 1.6 million people.
In addition, a recent paper by three scientists at the University of Hong Kong estimated, based on travel patterns and demographic data, that a surge in infections could kill around 970,000 people by the end of January.
Another post-infection retrospective estimate suggests that the outbreak may have killed about 1.2 million to 1.7 million people.
Both estimates raise the question of how many people have been infected. Jeffrey Sharman, an epidemiologist and professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, pointed out that if 40% to 65% of the Chinese population were infected (conservative estimates), and the death rate was similar to that of the United States, there could be 900,000 to 1.4 million people. Thousands of people died. Official estimates of infection rates among residents in many provinces in China are much higher than that.
(comprehensive report)
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