The COVID Situation in China
After nearly three years of strict anti-COVID regulations, China abruptly stopped all its prevention policies in December 2022.
In its latest figures, China has announced that 59,938 people with COVID have died in hospitals in the past month (8 Dec – 12 Jan). Of these, 5,503 were a direct result of respiratory failure, and 54,435 were from a combination of conditions.
This is a dramatic increase over November’s figures (7 Nov – 7 Dec) which saw just over 1,500 deaths.
Part of the difficulty in comparing figures these figures however, has come from th way in which deaths had been reported. Prior to these latest figures, only deaths that were directly caused as a result of COVID-related respiratory failure were counted.
With this in mind, it looks as though China’s relaxing of their COVID restrictions has seen an increased mortality rate of over 300% in the first month – not accounting for any other external factors, such as natural winter peaks in respiratory condition related deaths – as seen in other countries. Both figures also only account for deaths in hospital, with the real total being considerably higher when accounting for people dying at home.
With Chinese New Year taking place on January 22nd and festivities beginning January 21st China’s ministry of transport is expecting over 2 billion trips to take place across China around the weeks of the holiday season.
While the cessation of COVID-prevention policies has helped to boost the Chinese economy and general morale, but there is no doubt this will increase COVID rates across the country. And only time will tell how this will go on to effect rates in the wider world.
The ripple effect
There’s no denying, COVID changed the world. One of the initial situations many countries faced was that the essential PPE and RPE required to limit the spread of infection was almost all produced in China – and then the factories and ports closed.
Three years on, and the majority of PPE and RPE is still produced in China.
However, everyone is far more aware of what works to help reduce the spread and what does not.
Quality RPE at your finger-tips
Full Support Healthcare has continued to produce millions of top-quality respirators to ensure the UK healthcare sector can remain vigilant in infection control.
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