Tag: Coronavirus Omicron Variant

How Deadly Was China’s Covid Wave?

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China’s official count 2.5 million 83,150 deaths Model based on Shanghai outbreak 1.6 million deaths LOW ESTIMATE HIGH ESTIMATE Estimate using travel patterns 970,000 deaths Estimate using recent testing data 1.5 million deaths Estimate based on U.S. death rates 1.1 million deaths China’s official count 2.5 million 83,150 deaths Model based on Shanghai outbreak 1.6 million deaths Estimate using travel patterns 970,000 deaths Estimate using recent testing data 1.5 million deaths Estimate based on U.S. death rates 1.1 million deaths After China relaxed the world’s most stringent Covid-19 restrictions in…

Health Experts Warily Eye XBB.1.5, the Latest Omicron Subvariant

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Three years into the pandemic, the coronavirus continues to impress virologists with its swift evolution. A young version, known as XBB.1.5, has quickly been spreading in the United States over the past few weeks. As of Friday, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that it made up 72 percent of new cases in the Northeast and 27.6 percent of cases across the country. The new subvariant, first sampled in the fall in New York State, has a potent array of mutations that appear to help it evade immune defenses and…

How Bad Is China’s Covid Outbreak? It’s a Scientific Guessing Game.

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As Covid barrels through China, scientists around the world are searching for clues about an outbreak with sprawling consequences — for the health of hundreds of millions of Chinese people, the global economy and the future of the pandemic. But in the absence of credible information from the Chinese government, it is a big scientific guessing game to determine the size and severity of the surge in the world’s most populous country. In Hong Kong, one team of researchers pored over passenger data from five Beijing subway lines to determine…

From Zero Covid to No Plan: Behind China’s Pandemic U-Turn

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The southwestern city of Chongqing was the latest frontline of Xi Jinping’s “zero Covid” war, until it came to epitomize China’s potentially devastating about-face that has cracked the Communist Party’s edifice of absolute control. The city last month was enduring one of the biggest outbreaks cropping up across China, when the national leader, Mr. Xi, ordered officials to continue mass testing, lockdowns and quarantines. Chen Min’er, the Chongqing party secretary, devoutly complied, closing off neighborhoods and ordering the instant construction of a quarantine hospital designed to hold up to 21,000…

‘Zero Covid,’ Once Ubiquitous, Vanishes in China’s Messy Pivot

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A day after China’s ruling Communist Party announced a broad rollback of the “zero Covid” restrictions that had smothered the economy and transformed life in the country, the propaganda apparatus on Thursday began the daunting task of promoting an audacious revision of history. While the rest of the world concluded months ago that the coronavirus was becoming less deadly, Beijing presented the development as fresh news to explain its abrupt decision to undo the lockdowns that prompted widespread protests. In doing so, it also made a high-risk bet that vaccination…

China Eases ‘Zero Covid’ Restrictions in Victory for Protesters

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The Chinese government announced on Wednesday a broad easing of its exceptionally stringent Covid restrictions, an implicit concession to public discontent after mass street protests in more than a dozen cities a week ago challenged Beijing’s authority. The changes are not a complete dismantling of China’s “zero Covid” policy, but still represent a considerable loosening of measures that have dragged down the economy by disrupting daily life for hundreds of millions of people, forcing many small businesses to shutter and driving youth unemployment to nearly 20 percent, a record high.…

A Coming Fall Surge?

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Expecting a fall surge The Biden administration is preparing for the possibility that 100 million Americans will be infected with the coronavirus this fall and winter, according to an administration official. That’s lower than the number of Americans who were infected during the Omicron wave in December and January, but still amounts to roughly 30 percent of the U.S. population. Should that scenario play out, my colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports, the administration’s goal is to prevent a spike in hospitalizations and deaths. One way that might be accomplished would…

Inside China’s Zero-Covid Fortress, Xi Jinping Admits No Doubts

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China’s leader, Xi Jinping, waved at crowds of giddily cheering students. He held meetings with Olympic Games officials, economic policymakers and European leaders. He toured a tropical island. But there was a revealing gap in Mr. Xi’s busy itinerary last month, exposing the predicament that Covid is creating in a politically crucial year when he hopes to extend his hold on power. He stayed behind the scenes when it came to China’s biggest, most contentious lockdown since the pandemic began. Throughout April, Mr. Xi gave no public speeches focused on…

Under Lockdown in China

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At the height of China’s worst Covid outbreak, the authorities in Shanghai took over gleaming high-rise office buildings and turned them into mass isolation centers. Floor after floor, room after room, the buildings were filled with people, their beds arranged in tight rows. Those buildings, and the broader lockdown of Shanghai, reinforced the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s power to marshal resources in its quest to eliminate Covid. But they also fueled deep frustration with the government’s failures and overreach. In eastern Shanghai, police officers in white protective suits clashed with…

Beijing’s Testing Surge

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Beijing’s testing surge Beijing is racing to test nearly all of its 22 million residents three times over five days in a high-stakes bid to avoid a similar fate as Shanghai, where millions of residents have been forced into an almost unbearable monthlong lockdown. Today millions of Beijing residents took their second round of tests, and officials from the Chinese capital announced that they had uncovered an additional 46 cases. The city identified three more neighborhoods today as high-risk and four more as medium-risk, designations that both prompt lockdowns. Overall,…