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Removing China’s Covid controls could result in 1.5 million deaths, study warns
- A projection says that an unchecked wave of Omicron could lead to a ‘tsunami’ of cases that infects more than 112 million people
- This number would overwhelm the country’s health system and the researchers say vaccine uptake among the elderly needs to be improved
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China could see more than 1.5 million deaths from a wave of Omicron infections without Covid-19 controls and the use of antiviral therapies, a new study has forecast.
A model by Chinese and US researchers suggested that, given China’s vaccine efficacy and coverage, an unchecked outbreak that began with 20 cases of Omicron in March could “generate a tsunami of Covid-19 cases” between May and July.
Such an outbreak is projected to cause 112 million symptomatic cases, or 80 cases per 1,000 people, with 2.7 million of them requiring treatment in intensive care.
They estimated that unvaccinated people aged over 60 would account for three quarters (74.7 per cent) of the deaths, considering 52 million people in this age group were not fully vaccinated as of mid-March.
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How a Beijing residential compound lives through an Omicron lockdown
How a Beijing residential compound lives through an Omicron lockdown
They said in the best-case scenario where all symptomatic cases are treated with oral antiviral drug Paxlovid, which has been approved for use in China, intensive care admissions and deaths could both be reduced by nearly 89 per cent.
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