India’s Covid-19 surge dashes hopes of world reopening at once: Chinese expert

Shanghai doctor admits to changing his view, now believing countries will open ‘in a conditional way, within regions, rather than globally’

China is imposing strict border measures to ensure coronavirus cases do not enter from neighbouring countries

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A shopkeeper wearing mask as a precaution against the coronavirus rests outside his closed shop in Prayagraj, India, on Sunday, May 9, 2021. Photo: AP Photo

Published: 6:00pm, 10 May 2021Updated: 11:13pm, 10 May 2021

India’s Covid-19 crisis has cast a shadow on the world reopening and, despite a global ramping up of vaccination, some regions will open borders while others will follow later and in a more limited way, according to a leading Chinese epidemiologist.

Zhang Wenhong, director of the department of infectious diseases at Shanghai’s Huashan Hospital, said he had believed some countries, after sufficient vaccination, would open their borders first and the pandemic would be contained eventually, but the massive surge in India dramatically changed that scenario.

“Our projection on the global epidemic would have been a bit more optimistic, but that time frame now looks like it may have to be extended,” Zhang said in an interview with state broadcaster China Central Television. “It looks like the world may open up in the future in a conditional way, within regions, rather than globally.”

In recent days India has reported more than 400,000 new Covid-19 cases and 4,000 deaths a day, bringing the total number of cases to over 22 million and the death toll to more than 246,000 by Monday. The country’s health system has been overwhelmed and many experts suspect actual death and case numbers to be much larger than those officially reported.

An editorial published in medical journal The Lancet said Covid-19 deaths in India could potentially reach a “staggering” 1 million by August, citing an estimate by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research centre at the University of Washington.

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