The Center for Disease Control of China (CDC) said today that the number of deaths and hospitalizations due to covid-19 maintains a “downward trend”, after a peak in the country in recent weeks.
The daily death toll in hospitals has dropped from a peak of 4,273 on Jan. 4 to 434 on Jan. 30, a figure representing an 89.9% decrease, the CDC said.
The number of hospital admissions due to the disease peaked at 1.6 million on January 5, when it started to fall, reaching 144 thousand, registered on January 30, a drop of 91.1%, he added.
The number of people hospitalized with severe symptoms peaked at 128,000, also on January 5, before falling to 14,000 at the end of last month.
The CDC also assured that “no new variants of the virus were detected”.
Chinese and international experts have warned that the Lunar New Year holidays, this year between January 21 and 27, could cause a new wave of infections and hospital pressure in rural areas, with scarce health resources, due to the high number of displacements.
British health data analysis company Airfinity predicted that the country could record around 36,000 deaths per day during that holiday week.
The CDC recorded 6,364 deaths caused by covid-19 in hospitals between January 20 and 26.
Faced with growing popular discontent and falling economic data, the Chinese authorities opted for an accelerated dismantling of the ‘zero covid’ strategy, which was in force in the country for almost three years, with measures that included the blockade of entire cities, for weeks or months, and constant mass testing.
The sudden withdrawal of restrictions at the beginning of last December, without mitigation strategies or prior warning, resulted in a wave of infections. According to estimates by different local governments, up to 90% of the population will have been infected, in some provinces, in just over a month.
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