Shanghai braces for ‘tragic battle’ as COVID spreads

SHANGHAI: A Shanghai hospital has told its staff to prepare for a “tragic battle” with Covid as it expects half of the city’s 25 million people to get infected by the end of next week, while the virus sweeps through China largely unchecked.

After widespread protests against strict mitigation measures, China this month began dismantling its “zero-Covid” regime, which had taken a great financial and psychological toll on its 1.4 billion people.

China’s official death count since the pandemic began three years ago stands at 5,241 — a fraction of what most other countries faced — but now looks bound to rise sharply.

China reported no new Covid deaths for a second consecutive day on Wednesday, even as funeral parlour workers say demand for their services has increased sharply over the past week.

Authorities — who have narrowed the criteria for Covid deaths, prompting criticism from many disease experts — confirmed 389,306 cases with symptoms. Some experts say official case figures have become an unreliable guide as less testing is being done following the easing of restrictions.

Infections in China are likely to be more than a million a day with deaths at more than 5,000 a day, a “stark contrast” from official data, British-based health data firm Airfinity said this week. Airfinity said it examined data from China’s regional provinces, noting that cases are rising quicker in the capital Beijing and the southern province of Guangdong.

The Shanghai Deji Hospital, posting on its WeChat account late on Wednesday, estimated there were about 5.43m positives in the city and that 12.5m in China’s main commercial hub will get infected by the end of the year. “This year’s Christmas Eve, New Year’s Day, and the Lunar New Year are destined to be unsafe,” said the private hospital, which employs some 400 staff.

“In this tragic battle, the entire Greater Shanghai will fall, and we will infect all the staff of the hospital! We will infect the whole family! Our patients will all be infected! We have no choice, and we cannot escape.”

The post was no longer available on WeChat by Thursday afternoon. A person who answered the hospital’s main telephone line said they could not immediately comment on the article.