'Infection is inevitable': China Covid cases likely to peak in a week amid easing of curbs | 5 points

As the Covid crisis has deepened in China, health officials have said that coronavirus cases are likely to peak in a week. Experts say China could face more than a million Covid deaths next year.

The Covid-19 situation in China is spreading vast throughout the country and cases have been rising after the government took a U-turn on its zero-Covid policy. In a worrisome trend, China is expecting a peak in Covid-19 infections within a week, a health official told Reuters.

With the worsening Covid-19 situation in China, the health authorities are now predicting that the healthcare infrastructure would be burdened. Experts have forecast between a million and 2 million deaths next year, a report in AP said.

Here are the top developments of China Covid:

Courtesy: India today

China, which has reportedly seen a massive spike in Covid-19 cases in the last one week, has said that the coronavirus infections are likely to peak within a week. Zhang Wenhong, director of the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, was quoted in Shanghai government-backed news outlet The Paper on Thursday as saying China 'is expected to reach the peak of infections within a week.'
"The peak infection will also increase the rate of severe disease, which will have a certain impact on our entire medical resources," he said, adding the wave will last another one or two months after that. "We must be mentally prepared that infection is inevitable," he said.
China has reduced testing and stopped reporting most mild cases. Experts have forecast between a million and 2 million deaths next year. A health official told Chinese state media Qingdao Daily that the coronavirus infection was in rapid transmission with 490,000-530,000 new daily infections, which is set to increase at a rate of 10 per cent in the coming days. British-based health data firm Airfinity has said that infections in China are likely to be more than a million a day with deaths at more than 5,000 a day.
So far, China has reported less than 4,000 new symptomatic local Covid cases nationwide for December 22, and no new Covid deaths for a third consecutive day. On December 19, China reported the first official fatalities since the government shifted away from its zero-Covid policy and eased pandemic restrictions.
The government has narrowed the criteria for Covid deaths, which has seen widespread criticism from across the world. The removal followed a government announcement that only those who had directly died of respiratory failure caused by the virus would be counted under Covid death statistics.
-Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with Covid-19 on a single day this week, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing estimates from the government's top health authority. After the Chinese government ordered sudden lifting of lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing, hospitals have been struggling, crematoriums are overwhelmed and pharmacies are running out of medicine.
A hospital in Shanghai has forecast that half of commercial hub's 25 million people would get infected by the end of next week, Reuters said in a report.
Vaccination rates have increased over 10-fold, to over a million doses administered a day, since the start of the month, AP reported. While China counts 90% of its population vaccinated, only around 60% have received a booster. Older people are especially likely to have not had a booster vaccine.