With the emergence of a more infectious variant of the Covid-19 virus, a pessimistic prediction by Chinese researchers about the development of the epidemic in 2021 has attracted the attention of international public opinion. China’s epidemic prevention model also has limitations in the face of virus mutations.
A recent report by Chinese researchers published in a professional journal concluded that the Covid-19 outbreak could have a greater impact in 2021 than in 2020. The likely bad scenario is a global death toll of 5 million by March. Now, with the global spread of a more infectious variant of Covid-19, the likelihood of this pessimistic forecast becoming a reality has increased.
That’s how XU Jianguo, 69, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the State Key Laboratory of Infectious Disease Prevention and Control at the CDC, analyzes the current trend of the global Covid-19 outbreak.
Our RFI correspondent in Beijing, Stéphane Lagarde, reported Friday (Jan. 15, 2021) that Academician Xu Jianguo knows exactly what he is talking about. The internationally renowned bacteriologist was the head of the first team of experts dispatched to Wuhan a year ago to conduct a preliminary assessment of the pathogen results after the outbreak there. Xu now coordinates research at the State Key Laboratory of Infectious Disease Prevention and Control of the Chinese CDC, the Chinese military, and other military and civilian infectious disease research institutions in China, whose results were published a week ago on January 8 in the journal Disease Surveillance.
Covid mortality up to 3%
According to the researchers, infectious disease simulations show that at least 300,000 more people are expected to die by early March, and a worse-case scenario would be a total of 5 million deaths worldwide. If this pessimistic scenario does occur, that means the mortality rate is not 2.1 percent, but 3 percent. That’s the same mortality rate in Wuhan, Hubei province, last winter, when hospitals were overcrowded.
The limits of China’s epidemic prevention model
“The South China Morning Post quoted an academic at the Shanghai Pasteur Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who was not involved in the research, as commenting that that would cause the global health system to collapse. That is, as the virus mutates, the variants could hide in the population and strike every season. In such a scenario, the researchers point out that the Chinese model of epidemic prevention, in which mass closures and testing are carried out and strict hygiene restrictions are enforced, in short, to stop the spread of the epidemic, would not help.
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