SHANGHAI: Shanghai will shut most schools again from Monday, reverting to an element of China’s old coronavirus playbook as the rapid dismantling of pandemic restrictions spurs an explosion in cases.
Students in all classes except for those in middle and high school who will graduate next summer must study at home from next week, the education authority of China’s largest city said in a WeChat post on Saturday. Kindergartens will also be closed, according to the announcement.
The order was a rare act of caution from officials who have spent recent weeks rolling back almost all of the curbs that had kept Covid-19 at bay over the past three years.
Infections have also surged in Beijing, where the virus is now rampant, and appears to be ticking higher in Shanghai, where residents have gone from knowing few people who have had the virus, to whole families being infected.
Alongside the scrapping of zero-Covid, China has abruptly chanded its rhetoric about the disease. After branding it a lethal threat for almost three years, officials are now likening it to the flu and common cold as it spreads unchecked.
Three waves
The country is on track to experience three infection waves from now through mid-March, according to Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention. In remarks reported by the Beijing Youth Daily, Wu said 10% to 30% of China’s population of 1.4 billion is likely to be infected.
The first wave will mainly hit cities, Wu said. The upcoming Lunar New Year break — often dubbed the world’s biggest temporary migration as workers head home for the holiday, which is akin to Christmas — could then fuel the spread, he is quoted as saying, with the third wave to start in late February, when people return to factories and other workplaces across the country.
As of Dec 5, the proportion of seriously or critically ill Covid patients had dropped to 0.18% of reported cases, Wu said, from 3.3% last year and 16.5% in 2020.
This shows that China’s fatality rate is gradually falling, he said, without elaborating.
The scale of the current outbreak is already becoming difficult to quantify, with China dismantling its vast PCR testing apparatus and no longer counting asymptomatic cases, which typically took up the bulk of the tally.
There are questions, too, over the official death toll, with reports of many Covid fatalities coming out of Beijing funeral parlors and crematoriums. Still, China has not recorded a Covid death since Dec 4 and the toll for the entire pandemic still stood at 5,235 as of Saturday.
While projections vary, China could see almost 1 million deaths from Covid as it finally reopens, according to a report by researchers in Hong Kong on Thursday. Modelling by the US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation shows fatalities could top 1 million through 2023 as the abrupt reversal of policy results in a surge.
Beijing deserted
The fast-moving outbreak has turned Beijing, home to some 22 million people, into a virtual ghost town as people stay home sick or to avoid being infected. Roads in Chongqing in the southwest and Zhengzhou in central China are also among the most empty of major cities, hinting at the severity of outbreaks there.
Funeral homes across Beijing scrambled on Saturday to keep up with calls for funeral and cremation services as workers and drivers testing positive for the virus called in sick.
“We have fewer cars and workers now,” a staffer at Miyun Funeral Home told Reuters, adding that there was a mounting backlog of demand for cremation services.
“We have many workers who tested positive.”
It was not immediately clear if the struggle to meet the increased demand for cremation was due to a rise in Covid-related deaths.
At Huairou Funeral Home, a body had to wait for three days before it could be cremated, a staffer said.
“You can transport the body here yourself, it’s been busy recently,” the staffer said.
The respected Chinese news outlet Caixin reported on Friday that two veteran state media journalists had died after contracting Covid-19 in Beijing, among the first known deaths since authorities dismantled most of their zero-Covid policies. And on Saturday, Caixin reported a 23-year-old medical student in Sichuan died of Covid on Dec 14.
The lack of officially reported Covid deaths for the past 10 days has stirred debate on social media over data disclosure, fuelled also by a dearth of statistics over hospitalisations and the number of seriously ill.
“Why can’t these statistics be found? What’s going on? Did they not tally them or they just aren’t announcing them?” one netizen on Chinese social media asked.
