Nearly 90% of people in China’s Henan province are infected with COVID-19 amid a new rise in cases in the country.
Kan Quancheng, director of the Henan province health commission, told a press conference that 89% of the province’s residents were infected with COVID-19 as of Jan. 6, according to a report on Tuesday from the London Evening Standard.
The province is the third most populous in China, and the surge in COVID could infect up to 88.5 million people.
COVID CRISIS IN CHINA: BEIJING HOSPITAL RUNS OUT OF BEDS, FAMILIES BURN BODIES IN THE STREETS AS DEATHS RISE
Medical workers check on an elderly patient as he arrives at an emergency room at a hospital in Beijing, Saturday, January 7, 2023.
(AP Photo/Andy Wong)
But according to Kan, visits to fever clinics in the province peaked on December 19 “after which it showed a continuous downward trend.”
The staggering figure comes after hundreds of people protested outside a factory owned by the manufacturer Zybio, which produces antigen tests, in the city of Chongqing. The protests reportedly turned violent, leading to clashes between protesters and police.
The rise in cases comes just a month after the Chinese Communist Party ended the country’s strict “zero COVID” policy, which placed heavy restrictions on the movement of people with China for nearly three years.
Last week, it was reported that hospitals in the capital Beijing were running out of available beds to treat COVID-infected patients, forcing some to bring their own beds or sit on corridor floors.
Medical workers attend to patients in the intensive care unit of the emergency department of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
(China Daily via Reuters)
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“We don’t have beds, we don’t have oxygen and we have a room full of sick people waiting,” said a health worker at Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital.
Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, told Fox News Digital last week that China’s current rise could be attributed to the country’s insistence on using its own vaccines. .
“As soon as they released [the policy]there was rampant spread of a highly contagious subvariant, XBB, and a high risk of a new, more dangerous variant emerging,” Siegel said. “China stuck with its own vaccines, which are inferior to ours, and there hasn’t been much recent acceptance of the vaccine, so most vaccines have disappeared.
A woman wearing a mask carries a child in front of workers decorating an exhibition celebrating the upcoming 20th Party Congress in Beijing.
(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
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The country’s authoritarian leadership has moved quickly to censor critics of its COVID policies, blocking more than 1,000 accounts on the Sina Weibo social media platform that criticized the government in the past week alone.
The company, which works closely with the Chinese authorities to strictly monitor speech on the Internet, said last week that it “will continue to increase the investigation and cleanup of all kinds of illegal content and create a harmonious and friendly community environment for the majority of the users”. .”
