{"id":3689,"date":"2023-05-30T13:08:38","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T18:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=3689"},"modified":"2023-05-30T13:08:41","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T18:08:41","slug":"china-might-have-65-million-covid-cases-a-week-by-june-how-worried-should-the-world-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/05\/30\/china-might-have-65-million-covid-cases-a-week-by-june-how-worried-should-the-world-be\/","title":{"rendered":"China Might Have 65 Million COVID Cases a Week by June. How Worried Should the World Be?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/6283257\/china-xbb-covid-outbreak\/\">Time Magazine<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week when a Chinese senior health adviser projected 65 million COVID-19 cases per week in China by June, some\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DrEricDing\/status\/1661044300271042563\" target=\"_blank\">health experts<\/a>\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CNBCFastMoney\/status\/1661117060187824141\" target=\"_blank\">sounded<\/a>\u00a0the alarm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>China has been facing a new COVID-19 wave fueled by the XBB variant since April. Data from Zhong Nanshan\u2014a respiratory disease doctor who was among the first to confirm COVID-19\u2019s easy transmissibility\u2014provided a rare insight into how the disease could possibly be spreading in China almost six months after Beijing abruptly ended its draconian zero-COVID strategy. Since pivoting to \u201cliving with the virus\u201d policy from early December, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention stopped updating weekly infections. But the sudden relaxation of anti-epidemic protocols also led to an estimated\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2022-12-23\/china-estimates-covid-surge-is-infecting-37-million-people-a-day\" target=\"_blank\">37 million new infections<\/a>\u00a0a day weeks later. By January, experts said they believed\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/china\/china-says-covid-outbreak-has-infected-80-population-2023-01-21\/\" target=\"_blank\">almost 80% of China\u2019s 1.4 billion population<\/a>\u00a0had already been infected in this first wave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the second wave since April, Zhong\u2019s modeling revealed that the XBB variant is expected to cause 40 million infections weekly by May, going up to 65 million in June. This goes against the grain of Chinese health officials\u2019 estimate that the wave had peaked in April. In Beijing, the number of new infections recorded between May 15 and 21\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beijing.gov.cn\/fuwu\/bmfw\/sy\/jrts\/202305\/t20230526_3114000.html\" target=\"_blank\">grew four times<\/a>\u00a0in four weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/6283257\/china-xbb-covid-outbreak\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time Magazine Last week when a Chinese senior health adviser projected 65 million COVID-19 cases per week in China by June, some\u00a0health experts\u00a0sounded\u00a0the alarm. China has been facing a new COVID-19 wave fueled by the XBB variant since April. Data from Zhong Nanshan\u2014a respiratory disease doctor who was among the first to confirm COVID-19\u2019s easy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3690,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689\/revisions\/3690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}