News Desk
ISLAMABAD/CHICAGO: China’s latest and abrupt lifting of Covid-19 restrictions could result in a massive outbreak of pandemic cases and up to over a million deaths through 2023, a latest model has predicted.
Latest projections model
According to the latest projections from the US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), Covid cases in China could peak around April 1, 2023, when deaths could reach 0.322 million.
It said that about a third of China’s over 1.45 billion population would have been infected by then.
China’s national health authorities have not reported any official Covid-19 deaths since lifting stringent restrictions. The last official deaths were reported on December 3.
China, the second largest economy, lifted the most rigid Covid restrictions in mid-December after unparalleled public protests and demonstrations and is now experiencing a spike in infections.
After the lifting of the restrictions, it is feared that the pandemic could sweep across its 1.45 billion population in next month’s Lunar New Year holiday.
IHME Director Christopher Murray said that China’s zero-Covid policy may have effectively kept earlier variants of the Covid virus at bay. Still, the high transmissibility of Omicron variants made it almost impossible to sustain.
The independent modeling group from the University of Washington in Seattle has drawn relied on provincial data and information after a recent Omicron outbreak in Hong Kong.
Murray said that since the original Wuhan outbreak, China barely reported any deaths, which was why they looked to Hong Kong to get an idea of the infection fatality rate.
Other experts have predicted that some 60 per cent of China’s population would eventually be infected, with a peak expected in January, which could hit vulnerable populations, including the elderly.
