China May See Over 1 Million COVID Deaths Through 2023, Projects US Institute

Chicago: China has reported a total of 5,235 COVID-19 deaths since the global pandemic broke out almost three years ago.

The last deaths in the country were reported a fortnight ago, on December 3.

However, the US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has projected over a million COVID-induced deaths in China through 2023.

IHME has predicted that cases in China will peak around April 1, 2023, when deaths will reach 322,000. By then, about one-third of China’s population will have been infected, IHME Director Christopher Murray said.

The possible explosion of coronavirus-positive cases and deaths has been pinned on China’s abrupt lifting of stringent COVID-19 restrictions.

China, which had enforced some of the most stringent measures to tackle COVID-19, lifted restrictions early this month following widespread public protests. Consequently, there has been a spike in coronavirus infections, and there are fears that COVID may spread across the country’s population of 1.4 billion during next month’s Lunar New Year holiday.

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

He added that China’s zero-COVID policy may have been effective in keeping earlier COVID variants under check, but the highly transmissible Omicron subvariants worsened matters.

Governments and companies have relied on the independent research institute at the University of Washington in Seattle throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

IHME used data and information from a recent Omicron outbreak in Hong Kong.

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

IHME also used information on vaccination rates provided by Chinese government and also assumptions on how different provinces will respond as infection rates increase.