Covid 19
China gives up reporting Covid figures as virus rips through population
"As of today, we will no longer release daily statistics on the pandemic, with any data released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention for the purposes of reference and research," the health ministry said on its official website, RFA reported. The announcement came as China said on Monday that beginning January 8, it will put an end to a mandatory quarantine on arrival for overseas travelers that had been in place since March 2020.
China could bring down potential death toll to less than 2L: Study
The same study had predicted that if China abandons zero-Covid restrictions, as many as one and a half million people could die from Covid-19 over the next six months.
Beijing to distribute Pfizer antiviral drug amid unprecedented Covid wave
The report comes as the city grapples with an unprecedented wave of infections which have severely strained its hospitals and emptied pharmacy shelves, CNN reported. The state-run China News Service reported Monday that after receiving training, community doctors will administer the medicine to Covid-19 patients and give instructions on how to use them, CNN reported.
China will reopen borders, abandon Covid quarantine from January 8
Covid-19 has been managed as a top category A infectious disease since 2020, putting it on par with bubonic plague and cholera. When the declaration was made to do so, authorities said it would be administered according to the Frontier Health and Quarantine Law.
China hands over daily Covid data duty to local CDC as nations seek transparency
According to state-run Global Times, handing over the epidemic data calculation to a technical organisation "is a reasonable move to provide professional epidemic figures". "The NHC will no longer release daily epidemic data from Sunday. China's CDC will release relevant COVID-19 information for study and reference," the NHC said in a statement.
About 24 mn people over age 60 yet to receive 1st Covid jab in China
According to the South China Morning Post, as China eased its zero-Covid policy, the country doubled down on vaccination drives but the vaccination rate for the elderly is worryingly low.The vaccination figure fell to "just 42.4 per cent for those aged 80 and over", the report mentioned.
China woefully under-prepared as it grapples with Covid tsunami
As has been widely reported, China did an about-face on its zero-Covid policy, lifting almost all controls because of mass protests in late November. But the protests were just the trigger. The underlying issue is that China's leaders have finally comprehended the magnitude of the devastating impact of the policy on the economy.
BF.7 is Omicron with mutations, won't lead to severe disease: Experts
Unlike China, the new substrain of coronavirus has not affected India disastrously even as the first case of this variant was detected months ago. However, the Centre has directed all states and Union Territories to remain cautious and ramp up the genome sequencing to track the variants. The BF.7 is a sub-lineage of the Omicron variant BA.5, which, Dr Rajeev Jayadevan.
Pakistan at risk of encountering new Covid variant from China
The NCOC said that the new variant may enter Pakistan after the ease in the coronavirus-related restrictions in China, which went through an abrupt shift in policies, The News reported. The country loosened its rules to curb the increasing Covid-19 cases since the pandemic began three years ago after protests broke out against its tough restrictions, The News reported.
Ukraine to Taiwan, Argentina to Afghanistan, the flashpoints of 2023
While various "unknown unknowns", in the picturesque language of former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, or "Black Swan Events" of writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb, may loom over us, it is the mostly the known issues from 2022 that seem set to stay in the headlines in 2023. Accompanying them will be a few elections, slated for the coming year, that may have ramifications far beyond their respective countries.
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