Epidemiologists predict China will suffer a million covid deaths

The covid can cause a million deaths in China in the coming months, according to five epidemiological models carried out independently by the University of Hong Kong, the University of Washington, The Economist magazine and the consulting firms Airfinity and Wigram Capital Advisors.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
22 December 2022 Thursday 21:30
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Epidemiologists predict China will suffer a million covid deaths

The covid can cause a million deaths in China in the coming months, according to five epidemiological models carried out independently by the University of Hong Kong, the University of Washington, The Economist magazine and the consulting firms Airfinity and Wigram Capital Advisors. .

The five models are based on similar methodologies that take into account variables such as vaccination rates in each age group, vaccine efficacy, hospital capacity, or the R number (which indicates how many people each case infects on average). positive). Everyone agrees that hundreds of thousands of deaths can be avoided by increasing vaccination and applying measures to prevent infections.

In the absence of measures, epidemiologists at the University of Hong Kong collaborating with the World Health Organization have estimated that covid will cause 975,000 deaths in China in the coming months. The figure could be reduced by 35% if a massive vaccination with fourth doses had been started at least 30 days before giving up the zero covid policy (which has not been done) and if 60% of serious cases were treated with antivirals (something that will hardly be done). With these measures, the number of deaths could have dropped to 638,000 at best, according to a study published December 14 on medRxiv.

The consultancy Wigram Capital Advisors, whose models have been used by Asian governments throughout the pandemic, also estimates that the covid will cause one million deaths in China after the zero covid policy is abandoned. According to their estimates, which have been reviewed and published by the Financial Times, the peak of the wave will probably occur in March, with up to 20,000 deaths a day and a need for ICU beds ten times the capacity of hospitals.

Even bleaker are the predictions of the other models. Based on the previous experience of Hong Kong, where the omicron variant swept last March in a population with low immunity, the biomedical consultancy Airfinity estimates that between 174 and 290 million cases of covid may occur in China in the next three months, with a number of deaths that will be between 1.3 and 2.1 million (with 1.7 million deaths as the most likely figure).

For its part, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) of the University of Washington increases deaths to 500,000 until April and 1.5 million throughout 2023 if measures are not taken to stop infections. The IHME model, which predicts an explosion of cases in January, assumes that 80% of China's population is susceptible to infection with the omicron variant now circulating there.

Finally, The Economist has developed its own model that takes into account the number of people susceptible to becoming infected, exposed to the virus, infectious, and eliminated from the chain of infection (technically called the SEIR model). Their estimates put the number of deaths in the range of 1.1-1.5 million with current vaccination levels.

The modelers caution that their estimates have a margin of uncertainty due to the lack of reliable data on the covid situation in China. The behavior of citizens to prevent contagion, for example avoiding crowds and using masks, can mitigate the impact of the epidemic. On the contrary, the forty days of the Chunyun that begin on January 7 - the travel period that coincides with the time of the Chinese New Year - can aggravate it.

The real number of deaths will not be known after China this week changed the definition of death from covid and decided that from now on it will only count those in which patients die from pneumonia or respiratory failure.

“The Chinese government faces extremely difficult decisions in the coming months to find a balance between economic and educational outcomes and the real prospect of substantial mortality, especially in the population over 80 years of age,” says epidemiologist Ali Mokdad. , from the IHME institute, in a Twitter thread.