Model shows 1 million could die in China from COVID this winter

模型顯示今年冬天中國可能有 100 萬人死於 COVID

China's daily COVID death toll may reach 20,000 by mid-March 2023


TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — British media reported on Wednesday (Dec. 6) that according to Wigram Capital Advisors, a consulting firm that provided models for governments around the world during the pandemic, if China's epidemic prevention policy continues to shift away from zero-COVID and strict containment measures are canceled, 1 million people may die from the virus in the coming winter months.

The Financial Times reported that due to the public protest against China's zero-COVID policy, Chinese officials have reversed their attitude over the past week and have started to end the lockdowns, large-scale testing, quarantine, and digital contact tracing. According to the modeling by Wigram Capital Advisors, this may lead to an incomparable surge of infections during a "winter wave."

If China rapidly loosens its COVID restrictions, the daily death toll may reach 20,000 by the middle of March next year, based on modeling by the firm. It predicted that by late March, the demand for intensive care wards could peak at 10 times capacity and the daily number of inpatients could exceed 70,000.

The firm projected that large-scale crowd movement during the Lunar New Year may become a superspreading event, exacerbating the pandemic and crushing China's healthcare system. These predictions underscore the failure of Chinese authorities to fully vaccinate millions of elderly citizens and adequately address the shortage of intensive care wards since the first cases surfaced in late 2019.

Researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai also published a model in May of this year estimating that if the Omicron variant is allowed to spread unchecked, China's population of 1.4 billion may suffer a "tsunami" of COVID infections leading to nearly 1.6 million deaths in about three months.

However, under a scenario in which Beijing adopted a more gradual and controlled opening, the infection curve would be less steep and the process of achieving hybrid immunity could be achieved by next August, which would help control the number of hospitalizations and deaths before the middle of 2023. During the "summer wave," the daily number by July 2023 could be cut in half to about 4,000, according to the firm's simulations.

The total number of inpatients could also be capped at a maximum of 200,000, which would be significantly lower than the 500,000 infected in winter. Rodney Jones, the firm's founder, pointed out that China is not ready to lower its COVID restrictions.

Jones said that Beijing's current public message on reopening downplays the risks and is "underestimating just how much work — and cost — the rest of the world had done and borne to get to the point of living with COVID."

To achieve hybrid immunity composed of infection and vaccination, which would enable the economy to operate unimpeded, China must allow 20% of its population or 290 million people to be infected with the virus. Due to government opacity about the actual number of positive cases, the actual infection rate could be 50% higher, equivalent to 30% of the population or 435 million people.