Covid: It is too early to declare the epidemic over amid fears of a devastating wave in China, experts warn | world News

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Scientists have warned that it may be too early to declare the end of the COVID-19 pandemic amid fears of a potentially devastating new wave in China.

It comes after China began dismantling its COVID-free policy this month following a spike in infections and unprecedented public protests.

Projections are that the world’s second-largest economy may now face an explosion in cases and more than 1 million deaths next year after the abrupt change in course.

China’s approach to getting rid of COVID has kept infections and deaths relatively low among the population of 1.4 billion.

But the World Health Organization has said this approach is not “sustainable” due to growing concerns about its impact on people’s lives and the country’s economy.

Experts said President Xi Jinping’s move last week has changed the global picture.

“The question is whether you can name it after the pandemic when much of the world enters its second wave,” said Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans, who sits on a WHO panel charged with advising on the COVID emergency.

“We are clearly in a very different phase [of the pandemic]But in my opinion, that wave hanging in China is a wild card.”

More recently, in September, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “the end is in sight” for the pandemic.

And last week, he told reporters in Geneva he was “hopeful” that the state of emergency would end sometime next year.

Besides the risks to China, some global health figures have warned that allowing the virus to spread locally could also give it room to mutate.

They fear that this could create a new variant in line with how it will evolve when it is allowed to spread among large populations in other regions.

David Heymann, an infectious disease specialist and adviser to the World Health Organization, said: “I don’t think anyone can predict with certainty whether we could see new variants that might be a concern to the rest of the world, but clearly the world should be concerned if people get sick. And they die [in China]. “

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2:57 Why is China still fighting COVID?

He added that the situation in China will likely still be an emergency, but it could be more of a regional problem than a global one.

China uses a narrow definition of COVID deaths and reported no new deaths on Tuesday, even passing one in its total since the pandemic began.

The death toll reached 5,241 – a fraction of the numbers seen in many less densely populated countries.

Read more: The rate at which the virus spreads in China will be shrouded in secrecy

China’s National Health Commission said this week that only deaths from pneumonia and respiratory failure in patients who contracted the virus are classified as COVID deaths.

But Benjamin Mazer, assistant professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University, said such a classification would miss “a lot of cases.”

He added, “It just doesn’t make sense to apply this kind of March 2020 mentality where only COVID pneumonia can kill you. There are all kinds of medical complications.”

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