Chicago: China’s stringent COVID-19 restrictions could result in an explosion of coronavirus infections and more than 1 lakh deaths in the country by 2023, according to new estimates by the US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). According to estimates, cases of Covid-19 infection will peak in China around April 1, when deaths will reach 322,000. IHME Director Christopher Murray said that by then about a third of China’s population would have been infected. China’s National Health Authority has not reported any official COVID deaths since the lifting of COVID restrictions. The last official death was recorded on 3 December. According to the official figures of Beijing, there have been a total of 5,235 deaths due to the Corona epidemic.
China lifted the world’s toughest COVID restrictions in December after unprecedented public protests and is now facing a surge in infections, with fears that a population of 1.4 billion could be infected during the Lunar New Year holidays next month. may spread. When IHME’s estimates were released online on Friday, Christopher Murray said, ‘No one thought they would keep the zero-covid policy in place until they did. China’s zero-corona policy may have been effective in containing earlier variants of the virus, but the high communicability of the Omicron variant has made it impossible to enforce.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent modeling group at the University of Washington in Seattle, has relied on estimates by governments and companies in many countries during the coronavirus pandemic. IHME obtained provincial data and information from the recent Omicron outbreak in Hong Kong. Murray said, “China has reported barely any Covid deaths since the Wuhan outbreak. So we looked to Hong Kong to get an idea of the infection death rate.” For its forecasts, the IHME uses information on vaccination rates provided by the Chinese government as well as projections of how different provinces will fare if infection rates rise. will respond.
