COVID-19 in China has been a concern lately. Many patients “pile up” in the corridor of one of the hospitals, the crematorium was full of hearses, until it was predicted that the death rate from COVID-19 could reach 1.5 million cases in the coming months.
Many questioned China’s official numbers of COVID-19 cases, far below field records, because the mass testing rule was lifted. One thing is certain, epidemiologist Wu Zunyou said that China will be overshadowed by three waves of COVID-19 simultaneously in the next two months.
Epidemiologist Dicky Budiman of Griffith University in Australia, who is also a researcher on global health security, assesses that China’s health care facilities have “collapsed”. This is because approximately 70% of healthcare workers in many healthcare settings are exposed to COVID-19.
In addition to minimal resources for human health, medicines have also been “run out”, including drugs aimed at relieving the symptoms of COVID-19 fever. The forecast is that there are already 100 million people exposed to COVID-19 in China with a potential of 1.5 million deaths.
What is the culprit?
According to Dicky there are three things, the first is related to the zero COVID-19 policy, it is not entirely useless, but the immunity of the population ends up low when it is difficult to avoid the ‘gap’ for the entry of new Omicron subvariants. Furthermore, even the COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the elderly population is only about 40-50%.
Still far from the ideal goal. It is a different phenomenon, as in many countries where high vaccinations against COVID-19 are accompanied by high natural immunity due to the infection. “It is as if the population is still ‘sterile’ from the COVID-19 infection, vaccination for the elderly is low, even the effectiveness of the vaccine is questionable. Yes, it has collapsed,” Dicky said.
Dicky encouraged cooperation or assistance from many countries to overcome the COVID-19 epidemic in China. He warned of the risk of the birth of a super variant due to an explosion of uncontrolled cases.
“This means that mutations of the virus can occur in extraordinary ways on a large scale and this extraordinary has the potential to give birth to subvariants or supervariants and can produce new waves that are dangerous for the world,” he explained.
“Not to mention that if there is recombination with these local viruses, it is very dangerous from a health safety point of view. A new epidemic tragedy may occur because such a large-scale infection will paralyze health services,” he said. concluded.
Watch a video “There are 74 percent of Covid-19 patients with severe symptoms in hospitals who have not received boosters“
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