Covid fatality count in China could be massive, warn studies

London, December 21

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As India’s health ministry held urgent talks on the Covid situation on Wednesday, different sets of data modelling indicate that China could be facing a massive death toll from a surge in cases after it lifted its stringent zero-Covid policy.

According to a recent report in The Economist, around 1.5 million Chinese could die based on its model that calculates the trajectory of the country’s outbreak under different scenarios based on estimates of the rates at which people become infected, get sick, recover or die — referred to as the SEIR model.

Those figures tally with other recent modelling, including a report in ‘The Lancet’ journal from last week quoting analysis by Airfinity, a UK-based science information and analytics company, which projected that somewhere between 1.3 and 2.1 million people could die from Covid-19 after China re-opens.

Chinese health experts have warned that a new wave of infections that have hit China may result in new variants, prompting authorities to set up a nationwide network of hospitals to monitor mutations of the deadly virus. Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert from Peking University First Hospital, warned that Beijing may experience a spike in severe cases over the next fortnight. — PTI

Cases in US surpass 100 million : Johns Hopkins University

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