India has begun randomly testing international passengers arriving at its airports for COVID-19, the country’s health minister said Thursday, citing an increase in cases in neighboring China.
Mansukh Mandaviya announced the new rule in Parliament, where he also urged state governments to increase surveillance for any new coronavirus variants and send samples of all positive cases to genome sequencing laboratories.
Mandaviya also asked the public to wear masks and maintain social distancing, even though there are no official mandates for either.
India relaxed its mask-wearing rules earlier this year after coronavirus cases began dropping sharply. It has reported the most COVID-19 cases in the world since the pandemic began, but confirmed infections have fallen sharply in the past few months.
According to health ministry data, India currently has about 3,400 active coronavirus cases.
Cases have surged in neighboring China since it relaxed its harsh restrictions earlier this month following rare public protests.
Mandaviya said the Indian government has no plans yet to halt flights from countries where new cases have been reported.
The increase in cases in China has also prompted Indian health experts to issue advisories for the public to wear face masks and receive vaccine booster doses.
On Thursday, India’s top doctors’ body, the Indian Medical Association, also appealed to people to wear masks in all public places and get vaccine boosters. It urged people to avoid public gatherings such as weddings, political and social meetings, and international travel.
“As of now, the situation is not alarming and therefore there is no need to panic. Prevention is better than cure,” it said in a statement.
India, a country of nearly 1.4 billion people, has administered more than 2.2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses, but only 27% of the population has received a third booster dose.
The head of the World Health Organization said the agency is “very concerned” about rising reports of severe coronavirus disease across China after the country largely abandoned its “zero COVID” policy, warning that its lagging vaccination rate could result in large numbers of vulnerable people getting infected.
At a press briefing on Wednesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the U.N. agency needs more information on COVID-19 severity in China, particularly regarding hospital and intensive care unit admissions, “in order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground.”
“WHO is very concerned over the evolving situation in China with increasing reports of severe disease,” Tedros said. He added that while COVID deaths have dropped more than 90% since their global peak, there were still too many uncertainties about the virus to conclude that the pandemic is over.
Some scientists have warned that the unchecked spread of COVID-19 in China could spur the emergence of new variants, which might unravel progress made globally to contain the pandemic.
“Vaccination is the exit strategy from omicron,” WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said.
Ryan said the explosive surge of cases in China was not exclusively due to the lifting of many of the country’s restrictive policies and that it was impossible to stop transmission of omicron, the most highly infectious variant yet seen of COVID-19.
He said vaccination rates among people over age 60 in China lagged behind many other countries and that the efficacy of the Chinese-made vaccines was about 50%.
“That’s just not adequate protection in a population as large as China, with so many vulnerable people,” Ryan said. He added that while China has dramatically increased its capacity to vaccinate people in recent weeks, it’s unclear whether that will be enough.
To date, China has declined to authorize Western-made messenger RNA vaccines, which have proven to be more effective than its locally made shots. Beijing did agree to allow a shipment of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine to be imported, for Germans living in China.
“The question remains whether or not enough vaccination can be done in the coming week or two weeks that will actually blunt the impact of the second wave and the burden on the health system,” Ryan said.
Like Tedros, he said WHO had insufficient information about the extent of severe disease and hospitalization, but he noted that nearly all countries overwhelmed by COVID-19 had struggled to share such real-time data.
Ryan also suggested China’s definition of COVID deaths was too narrow, saying the country was limiting it to people who have suffered respiratory failure.
“People who die of COVID die from many different (organ) systems’ failures, given the severity of infection,” Ryan said. “So limiting a diagnosis of death from COVID to someone with a COVID positive test and respiratory failure will very much underestimate the true death toll associated with COVID.”
Countries such as Britain, for example, define any COVID death as someone who has died within 28 days of testing positive for the virus.
Globally, nearly every country has grappled with how to count COVID deaths, and official numbers are believed to be a major underestimate. In May, WHO estimated there were nearly 15 million coronavirus deaths worldwide, more than double the official toll of 6 million.
China only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 death toll, a Chinese health official said, in a narrow definition that limits the number of deaths reported, as an outbreak of the virus surges following the easing of pandemic-related restrictions.
Deaths that occur in patients with pre-existing illnesses are not counted as COVID-19 deaths, said Wang Guiqiang, the head of infectious disease at Peking University’s No. 1 Hospital.
China has always been conservative in how it counts illnesses, whether from the flu or COVID-19. In most countries, including the United States, guidelines stipulate that any death where COVID-19 is a factor or contributor is counted as a COVID-19-related death.
In effect, Wang’s comments on Tuesday simply clarified publicly what the country has been doing throughout the pandemic.
On Wednesday, China reported no new COVID-19 deaths and in fact subtracted one death from the overall toll, lowering it to 5,241, according to a daily tally issued by the National Health Commission, which did not offer an explanation for the decrease.
The clarification of how China officially records COVID-19 deaths comes as cases have soared across the country amid the loosening of restrictions. Yet the overall count remains blurry, as China has stopped requiring daily PCR tests and many people are testing at home. Anecdotally, many people have fallen ill in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
Earlier this year, Shanghai was hit by an omicron-driven outbreak. Multiple people told the AP then that their elderly family members who tested positive for COVID-19 and died were not counted in the city’s official death toll. When patients had underlying diseases, the deaths were attributed to those.
An AP investigation then showed that numbers have been clouded by the way health authorities tally COVID-19 statistics, applying a much narrower, less transparent and at times shifting standard, as Shanghai changed how it defined positive cases.
That narrower criteria has meant China’s COVID-19 death toll will always be significantly lower than those of many other nations.
An Associated Press reporter saw multiple people being wheeled out of funeral homes in Beijing last week, and two relatives told the AP their loved ones had died after testing positive for COVID-19. Last week, however, the country did not report any deaths due to COVID-19.
Different countries count cases and deaths differently, and patchy testing means that direct comparisons are often misleading.
But experts have repeatedly advised that authorities should err on the side of caution while counting deaths. Problems in death counts have raised questions in countries ranging from South Africa to Russia.
The World Health Organization estimated in May that nearly 15 million people died from COVID-19 or due to overwhelmed health systems in the first two years of the pandemic. That is more than the official death toll of over 6 million for that period.
___
AP Science writer Aniruddha Ghosal contributed to this report from New Delhi.
Several local governments in China encouraged people with mild cases of COVID-19 to go to work this week, another sign of the difficulty the country faces as its rollback of virus-containment measures sets off a wave of infections — and a growing number of deaths.
Health authorities reported Tuesday that five people died in the latest 24-hour period, all in Beijing, fueling concern that the toll could rise sharply after the lifting of most “zero-COVID” restrictions. The official toll likely understates the actual number, and it’s unclear how the unleashing of the virus will play out in China and whether the health care system can handle a surge in cases nationwide.
The city of Guiyang in southern Guizhou province proposed that infected people with little or no symptoms go to work in a range of sectors, including government offices, state-owned companies, medical, health and emergency workers and those in express delivery and supermarkets.
That’s a sea change from just a few weeks ago, when China’s policy was to isolate anyone infected at a hospital or government-run facility. The announcement Tuesday followed similar ones from the cities of Wuhu in Anhui province and Chongqing earlier this week. The moves appear to be in response to worker shortages that have affected medical care and food deliveries.
They also reflect the the difficulty officials face in trying to revive an economy that was throttled by pandemic restrictions, and now that they have been lifted, is being slowed by workers falling ill.
China had long hailed its restrictive “zero-COVID” approach of lockdowns, quarantines and compulsory testing as keeping case numbers and deaths relatively low. Yet the policy placed China’s society and the national economy under enormous stress and prompted rare anti-government protests, apparently convincing the ruling Communist Party to heed outside advice and alter its strategy.
Now, unofficial reports suggest a widespread wave of new coronavirus cases, and relatives of victims and people who work in the funeral business have said deaths tied to COVID-19 are increasing.
Wang Guangfa, a doctor in the Respiratory Department of Peking University First Hospital, warned Beijing will see the peak of severe cases in the next one or two weeks.
“The current wave of infection resembles an epidemic tsunami,” he said in a Q&A; piece published online this week. He also said northern China will have a higher rate of severe cases than the southern part because of the cold weather.
As is typical, cases of severe illness and death will be largely concentrated among the elderly or those who haven’t received booster shots of vaccines, said Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India.
China, despite fully vaccinating 90.3% of its population, has only given a booster dose to 60.5%. China needs to prioritize giving boosters, especially to those over 60, to avoid large numbers of deaths, Kang said.
The National Health Commission said the five newly recorded fatalities had taken the country’s total death toll to 5,242 — relatively low by global standards but potentially set to increase substantially following moves by the government to step away from the “zero-COVID” policy.
With people now testing and recuperating at home, China has said it is no longer possible to keep an accurate count of new case numbers, making it substantially more difficult to gauge the state of the current wave of infection and its direction. Some scientific models have estimated numbers will rise with an eventual death toll in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
China is trying to persuade reluctant seniors and others at risk to get vaccinated, apparently with only moderate success. Vaccination centers visited over recent days have been largely empty and there has been no major publicity drive in the entirely state-controlled media.
The other major concern is shoring up health resources in smaller cities and the vast rural hinterland ahead of January’s Lunar New Year travel rush, which will see migrant workers returning to their hometowns.
Numbers of fever clinics have been expanded in both urban and rural areas and people have been asked to stay home unless seriously ill to preserve resources. Hospitals are also running short on staff, and reports say workers have been asked to return to their posts as long as they aren’t feverish.
Case and death counts in every country are thought to underestimate the true toll of the virus, but there are particular concerns in China. Chinese health authorities count only those who died directly from COVID-19, excluding deaths blamed on underlying conditions such as diabetes and heart disease that raise risks of serious illness.
In many other countries, guidelines stipulate that any death where the coronavirus is a factor or contributor is counted as a COVID-19 related.
___
Moritsugu reported from Hong Kong. Associated Press journalists Olivia Zhang in Beijing, Aniruddha Ghosal in New Delhi and Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this story.
Chinese health authorities on Monday announced two additional COVID-19 deaths, both in the capital Beijing, that were the first reported in weeks and come during an expected surge of illnesses after the nation eased its strict “zero-COVID” approach.
With the latest reported deaths, the National Health Commission raised China’s total to 5,237 deaths from COVID-19 in the past three years, out of 380,453 cases of illness — numbers that are much lower than in other major countries but also based on statistics and information-gathering methods that have come into question.
Chinese health authorities count only those who died directly from COVID-19, excluding people whose underlying conditions such as diabetes and heart disease were worsened by the virus.
In many other countries, guidelines stipulate that any death where the coronavirus is a factor or contributor is counted as a COVID-19-related death.
The announcement comes amid testimony from family members and people who work in the funeral business who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution saying deaths tied to COVID-19 were increasing.
China had long hailed its hardline “zero-COVID” approach as keeping numbers of cases and deaths relatively low — comparing itself favorably to the U.S., where the death toll has topped 1.1 million.
Yet, the policy of lockdowns, travel restrictions, mandatory testing and quarantines placed China’s society and the national economy under enormous stress, apparently convincing the ruling Communist Party to heed outside advice and alter its strategy.
The easing began in November, and accelerated after Beijing and several other cities saw protests over the restrictions that grew into calls for President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to step down — a level of public dissent not seen in decades.
On Wednesday, the government said it would stop reporting asymptomatic COVID-19 cases since they’ve become impossible to track with mass testing no longer required. Most testing is now carried out privately, with those showing only mild symptoms allowed to recuperate at home without being forced into a centralized quarantine center.
The lack of data has made it more difficult to grasp the scale of the outbreak or its direction. However, a major drop in economic activity and anecdotal evidence of the virus’ spread point to a growing caseload, while health experts have projected a possible major wave of new infections and a spike in deaths over the next month or two, particularly among the elderly.
China is trying to persuade reluctant seniors and others at risk to get vaccinated, apparently with only moderate success. The other major concern is shoring up health resources in smaller cities and the vast rural hinterland ahead of January’s Lunar New Year travel rush, which will see migrant workers returning to their home towns.
Numbers of fever clinics have been expanded in both urban and rural areas and people have been asked to stay home unless seriously ill to preserve resources. Hospitals are also running short on staff, and reports say workers have been asked to return to their posts as long as they aren’t feverish.
Thailand’s king and queen have tested positive for COVID-19, and so far have only mild symptoms, the royal palace said Saturday.
Doctors prescribed treatment for King Maha Vajiralongkorn, 70, and Queen Suthida, 44, and requested them to refrain from duties for a while, the Royal Household Bureau said in a statement.
Their symptoms are “very mild,” the statement said.
Earlier Friday and Thursday, the couple visited Princess Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol at Chulalongkorn Hospital in Bangkok, where she was admitted after she fell unconscious due to a heart problem on Wednesday.
The number of infections spread by the dominant omicron subvariants has increased in Bangkok and Thailand’s tourist destinations after the country relaxed restrictions that were in place since 2020, according to the Department of Disease Control.
Its records show that 82% of the population, or at least 57 million, have been vaccinated with at least one jab. Of those, 53.5 million people have received a second dose and 32.5 million have received a third jab.
