Beijing reported two deaths due to Covid-19 on Friday, the first since most pandemic-related restrictions were lifted on December 7, the Singapore Daily reported. Two former journalists for Chinese state media succumbed to the virus on December 8 and December 15, the financial magazine Caixin reported.
Yang Lianghua, a former reporter for the People’s Daily, died on Dec. 15 at the age of 74, while Zhou Zhichun, a former editor of the China Youth Daily, passed away on Dec. 8 at the age of 77, the Caixin report added.
However, the Singapore Daily reported that China’s national health authority has not reported any official deaths from covid since it lifted multiple national epidemic control restrictions. The latest official deaths reportedly occurred on December 3 in Sichuan and Shandong provinces.
After three years of strict ‘Covid zero’ policy led by the government headed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, which sparked major civil unrest across the country, citizens breathed a sigh of relief as restrictions were relaxed. State media said the government allowed home quarantine for close contacts of Covid-19 and removed the rule of testing for Covid-19 on most public roads.
In some of the most high-profile protests, anti-Xi chants were raised during civil demonstrations in Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Beijing, and several other cities in China. In the last week of November, hundreds of people in Shanghai, China’s largest city and financial center, began publicly protesting against the government’s tighter Covid control restrictions.
However, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the strict policy of years had stopped working anyway. The head of emergency programs at the UN health agency, Mike Ryan, was quoted by CBS News that the “explosion of cases in China is not due to the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions.” “The explosion of cases in China had started long before any easing of the zero covid-19 policy,” he said.
Meanwhile, a new study by researchers in Hong Kong has revealed that more than two million people in China may succumb to the virus after the government’s rapid relaxation of restrictions. The report added that in the absence of a massive vaccination booster campaign and other measures to reduce the impact of the virus, some 684 people per million would die in a nationwide reopening.
The report was written by Gabriel Leung, a former dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, and two of his colleagues.
