What can happen in China with the relaxation of measures against Covid-19

After the protests of recent days in China some of the rigid measures of the strategy have been relaxed zero covid implemented by the Beijing government since the beginning of the pandemic.

Any examples? In the Capital, the stands for me test and the negative result is no longer necessary to access the supermarket🇧🇷 From Monday on the subway, while in Shenzhen in the south, as before in Chengdu or Tianjin, passengers will no longer need to show the negative result of a cotton swab to go to work on public transport or even to be able to enter a park.

But concerns are growing about the new infection management🇧🇷 U-turn after unrest leaves Dragonland unprepared for surge omicron in progress, with me Contagion Hey deaths that continue to increase.

In the last 3 years, since the first outbreak of Covid was identified, a wuhanChinese authorities have literally vowed to keep the virus out of the country, using every tool at their disposal, technological, mass mobilization and repressionregardless of the tragic costs to individuals and the terrible damage to the economy national.

Now Beijing has decided turn the page. Sun Chunlan, deputy prime minister and head of Covid management, announced last week that the country’s health system “withstood the test” of Covid-19 and China was in a “new situation”. The same President Xi he told fellow European Council visitor Charles Michel that China could also try to ease other restrictions because Omicron is less dangerous than the variant Deltathat used to be more common.

The problem, however, alerts the epidemiologistsas pointed out by the English newspaper The Guardianis that Beijing’s stance does not reflect Omicron’s impact studies, and the country is ill-prepared for a surge in infections of this type of variant that it could soon face.

“China must find a way out🇧🇷 So I think it’s really helpful for them to be able to argue that the virus has evolved in a way that makes it easier for them to open up.” Beautiful Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, adding: ‘With Omicron, the studies so far show that there can be a small reduction in disease severity, but not a huge one.’

Also because Omicron has proven to be less lethal in countries like Great Britain, when about 95 percent of the population had some form of antibodies from previous vaccines or infections, Bauld said. China, on the other hand, has vaccination rates and relatively low recall, particularly among vulnerable elderly people: only 40% of people over 80 had reinforcements🇧🇷 Almost no one, however, has natural antibodies from previous infections.

According to other specialists, the wave that occurred in the spring in Hong Kong, which has a much stronger healthcare system than the rest of the country, offers a sad prediction than China could face if it mishandled the opening.

“There have been a large number of deaths in Hong Kong despite a relatively small outbreak,” he explained. Guardian Martin Hiberd, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “Although the data suggest that Omicron is much less serious than Delta, we saw in Hong Kong how deadly Omicron itself can be where there is no history of past exposure [infezioni] AND limited vaccines in vulnerable groups such as the elderly,” he added.