The magnitude of the wave of contamination is now “impossible” to determine, conceded the Ministry of Health on Wednesday, the tests no longer being compulsory.
Mo12345lemonde with AFP
The Epidemia of Covid-19 has spread to a dazzling speed in China since the sudden softening of health restrictions. Beijing and its 22 million inhabitants are particularly affected by this wave of contamination, completely unprecedented in the city since the beginnings of the pandemic.
Its scale is now “impossible” to determine, conceded, Wednesday, December 14, the Ministry of Health, the tests being no longer compulsory. The Deputy Prime Minister responsible for health, Sun Chunlan, said that infections “increased quickly” in the capital. Many Beijing people claim on social networks to be sick and some companies have reported 90 % of their contaminated staff. These massive contaminations in Beijing are a shock for most Chinese, because only a tiny minority of the 1.4 billion inhabitants of the country have been officially ill from the COVI-19 since the start of the pandemic.
Last week, China drastically softens its health restrictions against the epidemic, which intended to limit contamination and dead as much as possible. The authorities had notably decreed the end of automatic placement in the center of quarantine for people tested positive and the stop of massive screening campaigns via PCR tests – which were almost compulsory. Consequence: the number of people who now take the initiative to go to a PCR test has decreased sharply. Logically, the number of new cases detected plunges, giving the false impression of improving the situation.
Beijing deserted
The Ministry of Health thus confirmed that official statistics no longer reflected reality. “Most people carrying the virus but asymptomatic do not make PCR tests, so it is impossible to have a precise idea of the real number of infected people,” he said. Most people are now self-tests at home, a method that goes under the radars of the health authorities.
If restaurants, cinemas, shopping centers, banks or even parks have gradually reopened in recent days in Beijing, the streets paradoxically very little frequented despite the end of the restrictions. Many sick inhabitants prefer to stay at home healing themselves, others are afraid of being contaminated by leaving by – 5 ° C and some businesses had to close because too many employees were sick.
In front of the Puren of Beijing Hospital, around fifty people, mostly feverish patients, line up on Wednesday morning to obtain a consultation and be prescribed medications.
recovery of tourist trips
Some residents have made up in recent days of excessive reserves of self -tests and anti -utili or antifier drugs which have emptied the stocks of pharmacies. A situation that created an online black market start. The market regulatory authority inflicted a fine of 300,000 yuan (41,000 euros) on a Beijing company which sold cars at prices deemed prohibitive, reported the newspaper Beijing News on Tuesday
The Baidu search engine said that research with the word “ibuprofen”, a drug against fever and the influenza which is now on everyone’s lips in China, had increased by 430 % in a week.
Total reverse of its zero covid strategy, which it has long defended at all costs, the government seems today determined to continue the reopening of the country. Beijing tourist authorities announced on Tuesday the resumption of tourist trips from groups from the capital.
But this epidemic wave, which beyond the capital is called upon to extend to other places in the country, could be hardly felt by the hospital system, especially in the less favored areas of the country. The other concern concerns the elderly, including millions, by personal choice or by impossibility of going to a vaccination center, are not yet fully immune to the COVVI-19.