China May See Over 1 Million Covid Deaths In 2023: Report

Washington: Abrupt lifting of stringent COVID-19 restrictions in China could result in an explosion of cases and over a million deaths through 2023, US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) said in latest projections.

According to IHME Director Christopher Murray, COVID-19 cases in China would peak around April 1, when deaths would reach 322,000. About a third of China’s population will have been infected by then.

China’s national health authority has not reported any official COVID deaths since the lifting of the restrictions. The last official deaths were reported on December 3.

China lifted the world’s toughest COVID restrictions in December after unprecedented public protests and is now experiencing a spike in infections, with fears that COVID could sweep across its 1.4 billion population during next month’s Lunar New Year holiday.

“Nobody thought they would stick to zero-COVID as long as they did,” Murray said on Friday when the IHME projections were released online.

China’s zero-COVID policy may have been effective at keeping earlier variants of the virus at bay, but the high transmissibility of Omicron variants made it impossible to sustain, he said.

The independent modeling group at the University of Washington in Seattle, which has been relied on by governments and companies throughout the pandemic, drew on provincial data and information from a recent Omicron outbreak in Hong Kong.

“China has since the original Wuhan outbreak barely reported any deaths. That is why we looked to Hong Kong to get an idea of the infection fatality rate,” Murray said.

For its forecasts, IHME also uses information on vaccination rates provided by the Chinese government as well as assumptions on how various provinces will respond as infection rates increase.

Other experts expect some 60% of China’s population will eventually be infected, with a peak expected in January, hitting vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, the hardest.