Nearly 90% of people in China’s Henan Province have been infected with COVID-19 as the country sees a resurgence in cases.
Kan Quancheng, director of the Henan Provincial Health Commission, said at a news conference that 89% of the province’s residents were infected with COVID-19, according to a report by the London Evening Standard on Tuesday.
The province is China’s third most populous province, with the COVID surge potentially infecting as many as 88.5 million people.
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Medical staff examine an elderly patient as he arrives at an emergency department of a Beijing hospital on Saturday, January 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
But according to Kan, visits to the province’s fever clinics peaked on Dec. 19, “after which there was a steady downward trend.”
The startling number comes after hundreds of people protested outside a factory of antigen test manufacturer Zybio in the city of Chongqing. The protests reportedly turned violent and led to clashes between protesters and police.
The spike in cases comes just a month after the Chinese Communist Party ended the country’s strict “zero-COVID” policy, which severely restricted movement of people with China for nearly three years.
Last week, hospitals in the capital Beijing were reportedly running out of available beds to treat COVID-infected patients, forcing some to bring their own beds or sit on the floor.
Medical staff attend to patients in the intensive care unit of the emergency room at Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital amid the COVID-19 outbreak. (China Daily via Portal)
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“We have no beds, we have no oxygen and we have a room full of sick people waiting,” said a health worker at Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital.
dr Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical staffer, told Fox News Digital last week that China’s current surge could be attributed to the country’s insistence on using its own vaccines.
“As soon as they were released [the policy]there has been rampant spread of a highly contagious subvariant, XBB, and a high risk of a new, more dangerous variant emerging,” Siegel said. “China held on to its own vaccines, which are inferior to ours, and there hasn’t been much recent vaccine uptake, so the vaccines are mostly worn out.
A woman wearing a mask carries a child past workers decorating an exhibition to celebrate the upcoming 20th Party Congress in Beijing. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
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The country’s authoritarian leadership has quickly moved to censor critics of its COVID policies, blocking over 1,000 accounts critical of the government on social media platform Sina Weibo in the past week alone.
The company, which is working closely with Chinese authorities to strictly monitor language on the internet, said last week that it will “further step up the investigation and cleanup of all types of illegal content and create a harmonious and friendly community environment for the majority of users.” .”
Michael Lee is a writer at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @UAMichaelLee