TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — According to analysts, half of China's 1.4 billion population could be infected with COVID in the next few months, based on current trends after the Chinese government relaxed its zero-COVID policy earlier this month.
Japan's Asahi Shimbun on Monday (Dec. 26) reported that the Chinese government stopped publishing the number of newly confirmed cases, including asymptomatic infections, on Dec. 14, claiming many citizens are avoiding nucleic acid testing, making it impossible to determine actual numbers. This is one of the factors leading to the number of cases announced by health authorities being far lower than the actual number of cases.
However, an internal document believed to be linked to a meeting of the Chinese government was leaked online showing 248 million new COVID cases between Dec. 1 and 20, accounting for 18% of China's population. If this rate of transmission is maintained, there could be more than 300 million new cases by now.
The Chinese government claims that more than 90% of the country has received two doses of a vaccine. However, Nakayama Tetsuo, a professor at Kitasato University in Tokyo who specializes in clinical virology, questioned the protective power of Chinese vaccines. "The vaccines are made based on a strain originating in Wuhan at an early stage of the pandemic, and they are not effective in fighting the Omicron strain, which is now dominant in China," he said.
Some reports suggest that vaccines administered in China are less effective at preventing severe illness and death among patients than messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines administered in the U.S. and Europe. For example, a study by two Hong Kong universities released last year found that three doses of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine (CoronaVac) failed to provide sufficient antibodies to fend off Omicron.
Chair professor of epidemiology at Hong Kong University School of Public Health, Ben Cowling, said the current speed of virus spread in China has surpassed any time and any region since the start of the pandemic. He predicted that in the near future, half of China's population will be infected because most people lack immunity to the virus.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of the China Centers for Disease Control, at a press conference in Beijing on Dec. 17, predicted that China will experience three COVID waves over the winter. He said that the first wave will occur in urban areas and run until the middle of January.
Wu believes the second wave will take place between late January and the middle of February, when hundreds of millions of people return to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year. According to Wu, the third wave will probably occur between late February and the middle of March, when the travelers return to the cities where they work.