As of today China is reporting 3,101 new cases of COVID-19 while Hong Kong is reporting 16,953 new cases. South Korea reports 88,172 new cases and Japan 206,943.
Let’s consider the possibilities.
- China’s “Zero Covid” policy has been tremendously successful.
- China isn’t reporting the full extent of the disease.
Both could be true. Am I missing any possibilities?
Update
From France24:
In Chongqing — a city of 30 million where authorities this week urged people with mild Covid symptoms to go to work — one worker told AFP their crematorium had run out of space to keep bodies.
“The number of bodies picked up in recent days is many times more than previously,” a staffer who did not give their name said.
“We are very busy, there is no more cold storage space for bodies,” they added.
“We are not sure (if it’s related to Covid), you need to ask the leaders in charge.”
In the southern megapolis of Guangzhou, an employee at one crematorium in Zengcheng district told AFP they were cremating more than 30 bodies a day.
“We have bodies assigned to us from other districts. There’s no other option,” the employee said.
Another crematorium in the city said they were also “extremely busy”.
“It’s three or four times busier than in previous years, we are cremating over 40 bodies per day when before it was only a dozen or so,” a staffer said.
“The whole of Guangzhou is like this,” they added, stressing that it was “hard to say” whether the surge in bodies was linked to Covid.
In the northeastern city of Shenyang, a staff member at a funeral services business said the bodies of the deceased were being left unburied for up to five days because crematoriums are “absolutely packed”.
Asked by AFP whether the rise in demand was due to Covid, he said: “What do you think? I’ve never known a year like this one.”
That constitutes a little anecdotal evidence for B. Additionally, it’s possible that the lockdowns themselves are partially to blame. As we are learning here an unforeseen secondary effect of lockdowns appears to be reduced resistance to other diseases.
Are they really tracking cases? I’ve seen news reports that they stopped collecting the data on number of cases.
The Chinese government has moved on from Zero-Covid so tracking cases is meaningless to the government, the populace and outsiders. What matters is hospital utilization, ICU utilization and health care system utilization overall. That isn’t being shared on an official basis, but on the other hand they don’t seem overwhelmed like in Hong Kong in the Spring either.
Bear in mind the death toll reported is based on the Chinese definition as dying from COVID, not dying with COVID — and since 90% of deaths is likely to be 75+ where it is practically guaranteed there is some pre-existing morbidity, the number will appear low.
But given the vaccination numbers, including an encouraging uptake in vaccine by the elderly now, China will still have a much lower death toll then most of the world. Also, China has access to Paxlovid now.
I would say China isn’t reporting the full extent of the wave of infections. I would also say Zero-COVID did measurably save a lot of lives.
Whether one considers Zero-Covid successful depends on what you think its objectives were.
Think CO has it. Case numbers aren’t as important when you have a vaccinated population. China likely ends up with many fewer (per capita) deaths and there is value in people having lived another 2-3 years.
Steve
That would be true with a vaccine that was 100% or near 100% effective. With present vaccines it means they can no longer determine the efficacy of the vaccine which seems like a poor strategy to me.
So a vaccine which is 80% effective at preventing death or severe illness is useless? You actually can determine effectiveness now. You are much more likely to die or be hospitalized if you have not been vaccinated. It gets complicated in the US because os many people have had covid but that wont be as likely in China.
https://www.mdedge.com/internalmedicine/article/257648/covid-19-updates/unvaccinated-10-times-more-likely-be-hospitalized
Steve
Please read what I wrote, steve. You’re attacking something I never actually wrote. What I wrote is that it’s more important to keep track of cases with an 80% effective vaccine than with a 100% effective vaccine.
I suspect that an 80% effective vaccine practically guarantees ongoing community spread and further mutations in the virus, some of them possibly more lethal or resistant to the vaccine.
How vaccinated is the Chinese population? And is the Chinese vaccine any good? I’ve read both that it’s OK, and that it sucks.
There’s no vaccine (mRNA or otherwise) that’s 100% effective at preventing infection. Currently all vaccines have something like 20-50% effectiveness against infection after 4 months or so. There’s no known solution to prevent mutation even if China didn’t exist or did things differently.
As a real datapoint. All the mutations (delta, omicron) since May 2020 until now have originated outside of China — with most of the world vaccinated with mRNA vaccines or natural immunity. And there’s plenty of ongoing spread and morbidity outside of China.
The Chinese government has the data on the efficiency of Chinese vaccines, from Hong Kong which used both Western mRNA and Chinese vaccines. The data is here (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00345-0/fulltext) . The key point is for 70-79 years old; Pfizer was 99% effective against severe disease, Sinovac was 95% effective. A little less effective, but insignificant from a public health standpoint.
I’m not claiming there’s anything special about the possibility of community spread within China. Just that 1 billion more people among whom to spread means that much more mutation. And, presumably, the virus continues to mutate even when the cases are not “severe disease”.
Shorter: IMO they should be keeping track of cases.
I think there’s an argument for epidemiological testing, like calculate the % of people with active infections, sampling the variants spreading in the community. I know they are sampling the variants and have shared that data with the public.
But the testing and case numbers China was doing for Zero-Covid was to track who had the virus and prevent those with infections from spreading the virus…. which provides little value if the goal isn’t to suppress the virus.