70% of Shanghai is infected with Covid.

According to official media, a prominent doctor at one of Shanghai’s leading hospitals believes that 70% of the city’s population may have been infected with Covid-19 during China’s massive outbreak.
The sharp increase in infections occurred when years of rigorous regulations were unexpectedly relaxed last month with no warning or planning, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums.
According to Chen Erzhen, vice president of Ruijin Hospital and member of Shanghai’s Covid expert advisory council, the majority of the city’s 25 million residents may have been infected.
“”The epidemic has already extended extraordinarily far in Shanghai, and it may have reached 70% of the population, which is 20 to 30 times larger than (in April and May),” he told Dajiangdong Studio, which is owned by the Communist Party’s People’s Daily.
In April, Shanghai was subjected to a two-month lockdown, during which over 600,000 inhabitants were afflicted and many were sent to mass quarantine centres. However, the Omicron form is currently spreading rapidly throughout the city, and researchers expect that illnesses will peak in early 2023.
Chinese health officials have claimed that the wave has already crested in other major cities such as Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, and Guangzhou.
Chen also stated that his Shanghai hospital was getting 1,600 emergency admissions per day, which was double the level before the limits were loosened, with 80 percent of them being Covid patients. “”Every day, and over 100 ambulances arrive at the hospital,” he was reported as saying, adding that vulnerable people over the age of 65 accounted for over half of emergency admissions. AFP reporters spotted individuals seeking emergency medical care outside the Tongren Hospital entrance in central Shanghai on Tuesday.
The travel wave
As millions of people prepare to return to their hometowns for the week-long Lunar New Year public vacation beginning January 21, Chinese officials are ready for a viral outbreak in China’s underserved rural heartland.
In an interview with state broadcaster CCTV on Monday, Public Healthcare Commission (NHC) official Jiao Yahui conceded that coping with the projected increase in rural regions would be a “enormous problem”.
What concerns us the most is that no one has returned home for Lunar New Year in the last three years, but they will be able to this year,” Jiao added. “As a result, there may be a retaliatory influx of urban residents into the countryside to see relatives, exacerbating the rural epidemic..” She also acknowledged the strain on hospital emergency rooms and assured that authorities would coordinate medical resources to ensure individuals in underserved regions were treated.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen nations have put Covid testing restrictions on Chinese travellers following Beijing’s announcement that its borders will reopen on January 8. Countries such as the United States have also mentioned The lack of transparency in Beijing about illness statistics and the possibility of novel variations as a cause to limit travel.
China has only registered 22 Covid fatalities since December, and the criteria for identifying such deaths were drastically reduced early in the month. But Jiao told reporters on Thursday that China had always provided statistics “on Covid-19 deaths and severe cases in the spirit of openness and transparency”. “China has always been committed to scientific criteria that are commensurate with international regulations for assessing Covid-19 deaths,” Jiao stated.