Patients with Covid-19 at a hospital in Chongqing, China, December 23, 2022 – NOEL CELIS / AFP
China has faced an explosion of contamination since the lifting of the “zero Covid” policy. Hospitals are overwhelmed and put the entire healthcare system under pressure. While the effects are yet to be felt in the rest of the world, experts believe the fallout will be visible.
Overwhelmed units, millions of cases and probably thousands of deaths a day. After three years of draconian health regulations and a popular protest movement, China lifted its “zero Covid” policy in early December. Three weeks later, the country is hit by one of the biggest waves of contamination since the pandemic began, putting public and private hospitals and crematoria under pressure.
Images of overwhelmed hospitals and patients being cared for in stadiums are circulating on social networks in a country where official figures should be treated with caution. Since Sunday, the National Health Commission, which resembles a ministry, has also indicated that it will no longer publish the daily figures on Covid cases and deaths, as it has done since the beginning of the pandemic.
“At least 250 million people have been infected in China for three weeks. Until recently we were around 660 million worldwide since the beginning of the pandemic”, analyzes Christian Bréchot, virologist and president of the Global Virus Network, who “panics numbers “.
A pandemic, a “global problem”
If it were difficult for the time being to assess the consequences of this Chinese contamination explosion on the rest of the world, according to the virologist, they would inevitably be felt.
“A pandemic is a global, global problem. We cannot argue in Franco-French terms. What is happening in China will inevitably affect global health in one way or another,” he asserts.
First, in a population where so many people are infected and living together, there is a risk of new variants appearing, even if it remains “theoretical”, as Christophe Bréchot reminds us. “We are not in an immediate threat situation,” adds the virologist, who remembers “that we are much better protected than we were three years ago”.
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Then come the “economic risks”. With all these new patients, the situation of 2020 could repeat itself: factories closed, production and exports halted… Especially since in several Chinese provinces, residents are allowed to return to work even with symptoms of Covid-19.
Heading towards a drug shortage?
One situation in particular that could have visible consequences in Europe and in France is the shortage of medicines. On December 24, Rémi Salomon, chairman of the AP-HP Medical Commission, recalled in a tweet that “80% of the active ingredients, the raw material for our medicines, are manufactured in China and India”. “The Covid wave currently sweeping China risks exacerbating our supply difficulties for many drugs,” he wrote, citing the need to “relocate production.”
This risk of tension related to drugs is real, confirms Christophe Bréchot. “We are already seeing a large percentage of companies in China closing down because people are sick. A large proportion of the active ingredients in medicines come from China, so the logic is that this will have an impact on our supply,” he predicts.
As for the Chinese government’s new policy towards the virus, the virologist assures that scientists “do not make a systematic diagnosis, but are discreetly monitored”. For his part, President Xi Jinping on Monday called for measures to “effectively protect people’s lives”.
Original article published on BFMTV.com
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