Outside a funeral home in eastern Beijing, dozens of people were bundled up in parkas and hats against the freezing temperatures Friday evening as workers in full protective suits wheeled out coffins one by one.
When an employee with a clipboard shouted the name of the dead, a relative trundled up to the coffin to examine the body. One of the relatives told The Associated Press their loved one had been infected with COVID-19.
Deaths linked to the coronavirus are appearing in Beijing after weeks of China reporting no fatalities, even as the country is seeing a surge of cases.
That surge comes as the government last week dramatically eased some of the world’s strictest COVID-19 containment measures. 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.
That halt in reporting made it unclear how fast the virus is spreading. Social media posts, business closures and other anecdotal evidence suggest huge numbers of infections.
It’s also unclear how many people are dying from the virus. An AP reporter who visited the Dongjiao Funeral home was told by relatives that at least two people cremated there had died after testing positive.
Health authorities had designated Dongjiao and one other funeral home to cremate those who die after testing positive, according to a relative of one of the dead. The woman said her elderly relative had fallen ill in early December, tested positive, and died Friday morning in an emergency ward.
She said there were lots of people in the emergency ward who had tested positive for COVID-19, adding that there weren’t enough nurses to take care of them. The woman did not want to be identified for fear of retribution.
Over about an hour, an AP reporter saw about a dozen bodies wheeled from the Dongjiao funeral home.
About a half-dozen people inside described how another victim had struggled to breathe that morning before dying, and the death certificate listed “pneumonia” as the cause of death, even after a positive test for COVID-19, one of those people said. The people interviewed did not want to be identified for fear of retribution.
Three employees of shops in the complex that houses the funeral home said there had been a marked increase in the number of people going there in recent days. One estimated about 150 bodies were being cremated daily, up from what is normally a few dozen a day.
One employee attributed it to the coronavirus, although another said there are usually more deaths with the arrival of winter. The employees did not want to be identified for fear of retribution.
China has not reported a death from COVID-19 since Dec. 4.
China’s official death toll remains low, with just 5,235 deaths — compared with 1.1 million in the United States. However, public health experts caution that such statistics can’t be directly compared.
Chinese health authorities count only those who died directly from COVID-19, excluding those whose underlying conditions 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.
Experts say this has been the longstanding practice in China, but questions have been raised at times about whether officials have sought to minimize the figures.
Also on Friday, China’s Cabinet ordered rural areas to prepare for the return of migrant workers this holiday season in hopes of preventing a big surge in COVID-19 cases in communities with limited medical resources.
Returnees must wear masks and avoid contact with elderly people, and village committees must monitor their movements, the guidelines said, but didn’t mention the possibility of isolation or quarantines.
There are fears of a surge in cases around China’s winter holidays, when tens of millions take to trains, buses and planes for what may be their only trip home all year.
The upcoming Lunar New Year falls on Jan. 22, but migrants generally begin heading home two weeks or more in advance. Some Chinese universities say they will allow students to finish the semester from home to help spread out the travel rush and reduce the potential for a bigger outbreak.
Medical resources in smaller cities and rural communities, which are home to about 500 million of China’s 1.4 billion people, lag far behind those of large cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Rural medical infrastructure includes 17,000 county-level hospitals — many of which lack even a single ICU bed — 35,000 township health centers and 599,000 village clinics.
China has been pushing to increase the number of fever clinics in rural areas to treat those with COVID-19 symptoms. Currently, about 19,400 such clinics or consulting rooms operate in communities and townships around the country, state media reported Friday.
By March 2023, about 90% of health centers at the township level will have fever clinics, Nie Chunlei, head of primary health at the National Health Commission, said Thursday.
“This will effectively enhance the capability of primary-level health care institutions to receive patients with fever,” said Nie, who also urged stockpiling of medicines and antigen test kits, many of which have become scarce even in big cities.
The lifting of some travel regulations has spurred both relief and anxiety over the level of COVID-19 preparedness.
Health experts have said China will face a peak of infections in the next month or two and is trying to persuade reluctant seniors and others at risk to get vaccinated.
The changes follow growing frustration with the “zero-COVID” policy blamed for hindering the economy and creating massive social stress. 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.
It’s unclear what prompted the government’s shift in policy. Experts cite economic pressure, public discontent, and the difficulties of containing the extremely infectious omicron variant as factors.
China wasn’t fully prepared for opening up from a public health standpoint, and the decision was driven mainly by economic and social factors, said Zeng Guang, a health expert formerly affiliated with China’s Center for Disease Control, speaking at a conference organized by the state-run Global Times newspaper.
Under the relaxed rules, obligatory testing is no longer required and people with mild symptoms are permitted to recover at home rather than go to a quarantine center. Meanwhile, the semi-autonomous gambling enclave of Macao will scrap its mandatory hotel quarantine for arrivals from Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas starting Saturday, the government said.
However, travelers must spend five days in home isolation and undergo testing, and are barred from entering mainland China until the 10th day upon arrival. Both Macao and Hong Kong have scrapped most anti-COVID-19 measures.
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Associated Press reporter Kanis Leung contributed from Hong Kong.
Total Doses Distributed = 931,341,585. Total Doses Administered = 660,400,812. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 267,907,969. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 228,831,995.
The company that assembles Apple Inc.’s iPhones has announced it is easing COVID-19 restrictions at its largest factory in China that led thousands of workers to quit and drastically slowed production.
Foxconn Technology Group said in a statement on one of its official WeChat social media accounts that it would end the so-called “closed loop” system at the facility in Zhengzhou, central China, that required workers to stay in their workplaces and dormitories to prevent the spread of coronavirus infections.
The move announced Wednesday came about a week after China began easing harsh COVID-19 curbs despite signs the number of infections is rising.
Following a spate of protests across the country last month many “zero-COVID” restrictions were lifted. That means people no longer need to take frequent COVID-19 tests to travel on public transport. If they do test positive for the virus, they can isolate at home if they have only mild or no symptoms instead of being sent to a quarantine center.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government is still officially committed to stopping virus transmission. But the government’s latest moves suggest authorities will tolerate more infections without quarantines or shutting down travel or businesses.
Thousands of workers at the huge factory in Zhengzhou walked out in late October over complaints of unsafe working conditions — such as food shortages due to closed cafeterias — and a virus outbreak at the plant.
The last quarter of the year is typically a busy season for companies like Foxconn as they ramp up production ahead of the end of year holiday rush. Apple has warned that iPhone 14 deliveries would be delayed due to manufacturing disruptions.
Foxconn, headquartered in New Taipei City, Taiwan, has been trying to rebuild its workforce after the massive walkout in late October. The company then ended up apologizing after a pay dispute triggered protests by workers who said Foxconn had changed the terms of wages offered to attract them to the factory.
In its announcement, the company said it would no longer provide free meals to workers because factory cafeterias would reopen. Instead, meal expenses will be deducted from employees’ wages as usual, though workers who must quarantine after testing positive for the virus will still get free meals.
The Biden administration is again making some free COVID-19 tests available to all American households as it unveils its contingency plans for potential coronavirus surges this winter.
After a three-month hiatus, the administration is making four rapid virus tests available to all U.S. households through covidtests.gov starting Thursday, a senior administration official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the program. COVID-19 cases have shown a marked increase after the Thanksgiving holiday, and further increases are projected from indoor gathering and travel around Christmas and New Year’s.
The administration is putting personnel and equipment on standby should they be needed to help overwhelmed hospitals and nursing homes, as was necessary in earlier waves of the virus. So far, there have been no requests for assistance, but surge teams, ventilators and personal protective equipment are ready, the official said.
The Biden administration is also urging states and local governments to do more to encourage people to get the updated bivalent COVID-19 vaccines, which scientists say are more effective at protecting against serious illness and death from the currently circulating variants. The administration is reiterating best practices to nursing homes and long-term care facilities for virus prevention and treatment and is urging administrators as well as governments to encourage vulnerable populations to get the new shots.
The planning comes as the administration has struggled to persuade most Americans to get the updated boosters as cases and deaths have declined from pandemic highs and most people have embraced a return to most of their pre-pandemic activities.
The official said funding for the new tests has been reallocated from other virus programs while the White House struggles to get congressional buy-in for additional COVID-19 emergency funding. The official declined to detail how much is being spent on the new tests or from which programs they were diverted.
The number of U.S. deaths dropped this year, but there are still more than there were before the coronavirus hit.
Preliminary data — through the first 11 months of the year — indicates 2022 will see fewer deaths than the previous two COVID-19 pandemic years. Current reports suggest deaths may be down about 3% from 2020 and about 7% vs. 2021.
U.S. deaths usually rise year-to-year, in part because the nation’s population has been growing. The pandemic accelerated that trend, making last year the deadliest in U.S. history, with more than 3.4 million dying. If current trends continue, this year will mark the first annual decline in deaths since 2009.
It will be months before health officials have a full tally. The October and November numbers are not yet complete and a late-December surge could change the final picture, said Farida Ahmad, who leads mortality surveillance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If the decline does hold, it will still be a far cry from where the nation was before the coronavirus appeared. This year’s count is likely to end up at least 13% higher than what it was in 2019.
“We’re (still) definitely worse off than we were before the pandemic,” said Amira Roess, a George Mason University professor of epidemiology and global health.
Once again, most of the annual change is due to the ebb and flow of COVID-19, which has killed more than 1,080,000 Americans since it first was recognized in the U.S. in early 2020.
This year started off horribly, with about 73,000 COVID deaths in January alone — the third deadliest month from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. For 2022, “the bulk of mortality was concentrated during that omicron wave at the beginning of the year,” said Iliya Gutin, a University of Texas researcher tracking COVID-19 mortality.
Monthly COVID-19 deaths dropped below 4,000 in April and averaged about 16,000 per month through November. The monthly average for 2021 was more than double that.
COVID-19 will nevertheless end up as the nation’s third leading cause of death this year, just as it was in 2020 and 2021 — behind the perennial leader, heart disease, and cancer.
Heart disease deaths, which have tended to surge in tandem with COVID-19 deaths, are on track to be down from 2021, Ahmad said. And it’s not clear whether the number of cancer deaths will change, based on preliminary data.
There may be some relatively good news regarding drug overdose deaths, which hit an all-time high last year. Provisional overdose death data posted by the CDC on Wednesday — through the first seven months of this year — suggests overdose deaths stopped climbing early this year, around last winter’s end.
Also Wednesday, the CDC released its first report on deaths involving long COVID — long-term symptoms after a person has recovered from coronavirus infection. The CDC estimates that about 3,500 deaths from January 2020 through June 2022 involved long COVID. That’s about 1% of deaths in which COVID was deemed the underlying or contributing cause.
Experts believe pharmaceutical weapons against the coronavirus have been making a difference. The Commonwealth Fund this week released a modeling study that concluded the U.S. COVID-19 vaccination program prevented more than 3.2 million deaths.
“We all really would expect that the number of deaths — and the number of severe cases — would decrease, due to a combination of immunity from natural infection and vaccination … and treatment,” Roess said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
China’s National Health Commission scaled down its daily COVID-19 report starting Wednesday in response to a sharp decline in PCR testing since the government eased anti-virus measures after daily cases hit record highs.
A notice on the commission’s website said it stopped publishing daily figures on numbers of COVID-19 cases where no symptoms are detected since it was “impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infected persons,” which have generally accounted for the vast majority of new infections. The only numbers they’re reporting are confirmed cases detected in public testing facilities.
This poses a key challenge for China as it relaxes its strict “zero-COVID” policy. With mass-PCR testing no longer obligatory and people with mild symptoms allowed to recuperate at home rather than in one of the field hospitals that became notorious for overcrowding and poor hygiene, it has grown more difficult to gauge the true number of cases.
Beijing’s streets have grown eerily quiet, with lines forming outside fever clinics — the number of which has been increased from 94 to 303 — and at pharmacies, where cold and flu medications are harder to find.
Despite a push to boost vaccinations among the elderly, two centers set up in Beijing to administer shots were empty Tuesday except for medical personnel. Despite fears of a major outbreak, there was little evidence of a surge in patient numbers.
At the China-Japan Friendship Hospital’s fever clinic in Beijing, a dozen people waited for nucleic acid test results. Nurses in full-body white protective gear checked in patients one by one.
A few kilometers (miles) south, at Chaoyang Hospital, about a dozen people waited in a line of blue tents, deflecting winds amid subzero temperatures. One person in the queue took out a bottle of disinfectant and sprayed it around her as she waited.
Across the street at Gaoji Baikang Pharmacy, around a dozen people waited in line for cough medication and Chinese herbal remedies. A sign at the front told waiting customers: “Avoid panic and hoarding, we are doing all we can to stock up to fulfill your medicinal needs.” A man coming out had bought two packages of Lianhua Qingwen, a Chinese herbal remedy, saying that each customer was restricted from buying any more than that.
Inquiries to health hotlines have increased six-fold, according to state media.
Without asymptomatic cases being counted, China reported just 2,249 “confirmed” infections Wednesday, bringing the nation’s total to 369,918 — more than double the level on Oct. 1. It has recorded 5,235 deaths — compared with 1.1 million in the United States.
China’s government-supplied figures have not been independently verified and questions have been raised about whether the Communist Party has sought to minimize numbers of cases and deaths.
Since Tuesday, the U.S. consulates in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang and the central city of Wuhan have been offering only emergency services “in response to increased number of COVID-19 cases,” the State Department said.
President Xi Jinping’s government is still officially committed to stopping virus transmission. But the latest moves suggest the party will tolerate more cases without quarantines or shutting down travel or businesses as it winds down its “zero-COVID” strategy.
Despite relaxed rules, restaurants were mostly closed or empty in the capital. Many businesses are having difficulty finding enough staff who haven’t gotten infected. Sanlitun, one of Beijing’s most popular shopping districts, was deserted despite having its anti-COVID-19 fences taken down in recent days.
Hospitals have also reportedly been struggling to remain staffed, while packages were piling up at distribution points because of a shortage of China’s ubiquitous motorized tricycle delivery drivers.
Some Chinese universities say they will allow students to finish the semester from home in hopes of reducing the potential for a bigger COVID-19 outbreak during the January Lunar New Year travel rush.
Starting Tuesday, China also stopped tracking some travel, potentially reducing the likelihood people will be forced into quarantine for visiting COVID-19 hot spots. Despite that, China’s international borders remain largely shut and there has been no word on when restrictions will be eased on inbound travelers and Chinese wanting to go overseas.
The move follows the government’s dramatic announcement last week that it was ending many of the strictest measures, following three years during which it enforced some of the world’s tightest virus restrictions.
Last month in Beijing and several other cities, protests over the restrictions grew into calls for Xi and the Communist Party to step down — a level of public dissent not seen in decades. The party responded with a massive show of force and an unknown number of people were arrested at the protests or in the days following.
Experts warn there still is a chance the party might reverse course and reimpose restrictions if a large-scale outbreak ensues.
