China’s sudden lifting of strict COVID-19 restrictions could lead to a sharp increase in cases and more than a million deaths in 2023, according to new projections from the US Institute for Health Measurement and Evaluation (IHME). Reuters.

He estimated that cases in China would peak around April 1, when the total number of deaths would reach 322,000.

IHME director Christopher Murray said that by then about a third of China’s population would be infected.

“Nobody thought it would last so long without COVID”

China’s National Health Administration has not officially reported any deaths from COVID since restrictions were lifted. The last deaths were officially reported on December 3. The official total number of deaths caused by the pandemic is 5,235.

China lifted some of the world’s strictest COVID-19 restrictions in December after unprecedented public protests, and it now faces a surge in infections amid fears the disease could strike its 1.4 billion population during the Lunar New Year celebrations next month.

“Nobody thought they would stay at zero COVID this long,” Murray said Friday, when the IHME projections were released online.

China’s zero-contagion policy may have been effective in containing earlier variants of the virus, he said, but the high transmission of Omicron’s variants made it unsustainable.

An independent modeling analysis group at the University of Washington in Seattle, relied on by governments and companies throughout the pandemic, used province-level data and information from the recent Omicron outbreak in Hong Kong to make the predictions.

Another hypothesis is that the peak of the epidemic will occur in January

“Since the first outbreak in Wuhan, China has reported almost no deaths. “That’s why we looked at Hong Kong to get an idea of ​​the death rate from the infection,” Murray said.

For its projections, IHME also uses information on vaccination rates provided by the Chinese government, as well as assumptions about how different provinces will respond to rising infection rates.

Other experts expect that about 60 percent of China’s population will eventually be infected, with the peak expected in January, which will hit the most vulnerable, such as the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions.

Among the main challenges are China’s large number of vulnerable people, the use of less effective vaccines and low vaccination coverage among people over 80, who are at the highest risk of serious disease.

Forecast of a million deaths by the end of January

According to a yet-to-be-published paper published Wednesday on Medrxiv, disease modeling researchers at the University of Hong Kong predict that lifting COVID-19 restrictions and simultaneously reopening all provinces from December 2022 to January 2023 would result in 684 deaths per million people during this time period. has been reviewed by other researchers.

Based on China’s population of 1.41 billion, and excluding measures such as the mass vaccination campaign, this equates to 964,400 deaths.

Another study, published in Nature Medicine in July 2022 by researchers from the School of Public Health at Fudan University in Shanghai, predicted that an unrestricted Omicron surge would result in 1.55 million deaths over a six-month period and a 15.6-fold increase in the need for intensive care units . more than existing capacity.

Yanzhong Huang, a global health researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, said 164 million people in China have diabetes, a risk factor for COVID.

There are also 8 million people over the age of 80 who have never been vaccinated.

Chinese officials are now encouraging people to get immunized by choosing from a list of newer vaccines made in China. The government is still reluctant to use foreign vaccines, Huang said.

China’s National Health Commission said on Friday it had accelerated vaccination and stockpiled ventilators and essential medicines.