Hollywood Cat is no longer.

The Los Angeles area’s most famous mountain lion, an aged wild male feline sighted around the city’s Griffith Park, was euthanized Saturday, wildlife officials said.

For years, it was known to prowl around the hillside “Hollywood” sign visible around much of Los Angeles, a fitting setting for a celebrity cat.

It earned the nickname Hollywood Cat, but the mountain lion — estimated to be around 11 years old  — is officially called P-22.

State and federal wildlife officers decided earlier this month to capture it due to its erratic behavior, perhaps associated with being struck by a vehicle.

Veterinarians found “significant trauma” to its head, right eye and internal organs, California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement.

The experts also found underlying health issues, including “irreversible kidney disease, chronic weight loss, extensive parasitic skin infection over his entire body and localized arthritis.”

“The most difficult, but compassionate choice was to respectfully minimize his suffering and stress by humanely ending his journey,” the statement said.

“Mountain lion P-22 has had an extraordinary life and captured the hearts of the people of Los Angeles and beyond.”

Euthanizing the cougar was a punch to the gut for game experts who had grown to love the animal.

“This really hurts,” said Chuck Bonham, director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, when he announced P-22’s death, according to USA Today.

“It’s been an incredibly difficult several days.”

‘Our favorite celebrity’ 

Congressman Adam Schiff, who represents part of Los Angeles County, said he was “heartbroken” at P-22’s passing.

“He was our favorite celebrity neighbor, occasional troublemaker, and beloved L.A. mascot,” Schiff tweeted.

“But most of all he was a magnificent, wild creature, who reminded us that we are part of a natural world much bigger than ourselves.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom praised P-22’s “incredible journey” in a statement.

“P-22’s survival on an island of wilderness in the heart of Los Angeles captivated people around the world,” Newsom said.

Griffith Park, where P-22 lived for perhaps a decade, is hemmed in by freeways and urban sprawl. It is a nine-square-mile (23-square-kilometer) isolated patch of nature.

Experts marveled at how the wild cat got across either of two major Los Angeles freeways — the 405 and 101 — to get to Griffith Park as early as 2012.

Officials said they were not looking for the driver who hit it.

“This situation is not the fault of P-22, nor of a driver who may have hit him,” the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said.

“Rather, it is an eventuality that arises from habitat loss and fragmentation, and it underscores the need for thoughtful construction of wildlife crossings and well-planned spaces that provide wild animals room to roam.”

In a profile of P-22 done long before its death, the National Park Service lamented that Griffith Park is too small for a second cougar, and “it’s unlikely he will ever find love with a female lion.”

The cat’s renown was due to frequent sightings, video doorbell cameras and physical encounters.

A Facebook page in honor of the cougar has more than 20,000 followers.
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Uganda on Saturday lifted a two-month lockdown on two districts at the epicenter of the country’s Ebola epidemic, amid cautious hope that the outbreak could end soon.

Since authorities declared an Ebola outbreak Sept. 20, the East African nation has registered 142 confirmed cases and 56 deaths, with the disease spreading to the capital, Kampala.

The two central districts at the heart of the outbreak, Mubende and Kassanda, were placed under lockdown by President Yoweri Museveni on Oct. 15.

But on Saturday, Vice President Jessica Alupo announced that the government was “lifting all movement restrictions and curfew in Mubende and Kassanda districts with immediate effect.”

The two hotspots were under a dusk-to-dawn curfew, with markets, bars and churches closed as well as personal travel banned.

“The lifting of the restrictions is based on the fact that currently there is currently no transmission, no contact under follow-up, no patients in the isolation facilities, and we are progressing well,” Alupo said in a televised address delivered on behalf of Museveni.

Ugandan authorities said last month that new cases were falling, and the last confirmed patient with the disease was discharged from hospital Nov. 30.

Alupa warned however that the government remained on “high alert” for any resurgence in cases.

The announcement came after local leaders in the two districts appealed last month for the lockdown to be lifted and implored the central government to provide aid to citizens hit hard by the curbs on business.

The outbreak has been caused by the Sudan strain of the virus, for which there is currently no vaccine.

Uganda earlier this month received its first shipment of trial vaccines against the Sudan strain, with more doses expected in the coming weeks.

They will be used in a so-called ring vaccination trial, where all contacts of confirmed Ebola patients, and contacts of contacts, are jabbed along with frontline and health workers.

However, the absence of active Ebola cases in recent days has held up the vaccine trials, according to international health experts working in Uganda.

According to the World Health Organization, an outbreak of the disease ends when there are no new cases for 42 consecutive days — twice the incubation period of Ebola.

Ebola spreads through bodily fluids. Common symptoms are fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea.

Outbreaks are difficult to contain, especially in urban environments. 
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Negotiators at a United Nations biodiversity conference Saturday have still not resolved most of the key issues around protecting the world’s nature by 2030 and providing tens of billions of dollars to developing countries to fund those efforts.

The United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP15, is set to wrap up Monday in Montreal and delegates were racing to agree on language in a framework that calls for protecting 30% of global land and marine areas by 2030, a goal known as “30 by 30.” Currently, 17% of terrestrial and 10% of marine areas globally are protected.

They also have to settle on amounts of funding that would go to financing projects to create protected areas and restore marine and other ecosystems. Early draft frameworks called for closing a $700 billion gap in financing by 2030. Most of that would come from reforming subsidies in the agriculture, fisheries and energy sectors but there are also calls for tens of billions of dollars in new funding that would flow from rich to poor nations.

“From the beginning of the negotiations, we’ve been seeing systematically some countries weakening the ambition. The ambition needs to come back,” Marco Lambertini, the director general of WWF International said, adding that they needed a “clear conservation target” that “sets the world on a clear trajectory towards delivering a nature positive future.”

Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, expressed more optimism. Guilbeault told The Associated Press Saturday morning that he has heard “few people talk about red lines” and that means “people are willing to talk. People are willing to negotiate.”

“I’ve heard a lot of support for ambition from all corners of the world,” Guilbeault said. “Everyone wants to leave here with an ambitious agreement.”

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, told reporters Saturday afternoon that she was encouraged by the progress especially around committing resources but that a deal had not been reached yet.

“The negotiating teams have more work to do. They have to turn promises made into plans, ambitions and actions,” she said.

The ministers and government officials from about 190 countries mostly agree that protecting biodiversity has to be a priority, with many comparing those efforts to climate talks that wrapped up last month in Egypt.

Climate change coupled with habitat loss, pollution and development have hammered the world’s biodiversity, with one estimate in 2019 warning that a million plant and animal species face extinction within decades — a rate of loss 1,000 times greater than expected. Humans use about 50,000 wild species routinely, and 1 out of 5 people of the world’s 8 billion population depend on those species for food and income, the report said.

But they are struggling to agree on what that protection looks like and who will pay for it.

The financing has been among the most contentious issues, with delegates from 70 African, South American and Asian countries walking out of negotiations Wednesday. They returned several hours later.

Brazil, speaking for developing countries, said in a statement that a new funding mechanism dedicated to biodiversity be established and that developed countries provide $100 billion annually in financial grants to emerging economies until 2030.

“You need a robust and ambitious package on finance that matches the ambition of the Global Biodiversity framework,” Leonardo Cleaver de Athayde, the head of the Brazilian delegation, told the AP.

“This will cost a lot of money to implement. The targets are extremely ambitious and cost a lot of money,” he continued. “The developing countries will bear a higher burden in implementing it because most biodiversity resources are to be found in developing countries. They need international support.”

The donor countries — the European Union and 13 countries — responded Friday with a statement promising to increase biodiversity financing. They noted they doubled biodiversity spending from 2010 to 2015 and committed to several billion dollars more in biodiversity funding since then.

Zac Goldsmith, the U.K.’s minister for Overseas Territories, Commonwealth, Energy, Climate and Environment, acknowledged the focus cannot only be on popular protection measures like the 30 by 30 goal.

“The 30 by 30 is a headline target, but you can’t deliver 30 by 30 without a whole range of other things being agreed as well,” he said. “We’re not gonna have 30 by 30 without finance. We’re not going to have it unless other countries do as Costa Rica has and break the link between agricultural productivity and land degradation and deforestation. And we’re not gonna be able to do any of these things if we don’t address … subsidies.”

Even protection targets are still being squabbled over. Many countries believe 30% is an admirable goal but some countries are pushing to water the language down to allow among other things sustainable activities in those areas that conservationists fear could result in destructive logging and mining. Others want language referencing ways to better manage the other 70% of the world that wouldn’t be protected.

Other disagreements revolve around how best to share the benefits from genetic resources and enshrining the rights of Indigenous groups in any agreement. Some Indigenous groups want direct access to funding and a voice in designating protected areas that impact Indigenous peoples.

“Any protected areas that affect Indigenous peoples need to have the free prior informed consent of Indigenous peoples, otherwise there will be the same old patters of Indigenous peoples being displaced by protected areas,” Atossa Soltani, the director of global strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, an alliance of 30 Indigenous nations in Ecuador and Peru working to working to permanently protect 86 million acres of rainforest, said in an email interview.

The other challenge is including language — similar to the Paris Agreement on climate change — that creates a stronger system to report and verify the progress countries make. Many point to the failures of the 2010 biodiversity framework, which saw only six of the 20 targets partially met by a 2020 deadline.

“It’s very important for parties to see what others are doing. It’s important for civil society, people like you to track our progress or sometimes unfortunately lack thereof,” Guilbeault said. “It’s an important tool to help keep our feet to the fire. If it’s effective on climate. We should have it on nature as well.”

 
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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 long-standing 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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he World Health Organization warns billions of people who lack access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene are at risk of deadly infectious diseases. The finding appears in the WHO and U.N.-Water’s Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) report issued this week.

Data collected from 121 countries show billions of people are facing a health crisis and states must act urgently to improve water, sanitation and hygiene, known as WASH. The report, the most comprehensive to date, finds most countries are not on track to achieve the U.N. sustainable development goal of providing water and sanitation for all by 2030.

Bruce Gordon is unit head, water, sanitation, hygiene and health at the WHO. While dramatic acceleration is needed, he says only 25 percent of countries are on track to meet their target for sanitation and only 45 percent for drinking water.

((GORDON ACT))

 

“This is against the backdrop of a tremendous amount of disease from diarrhea linked to ingestion of poor water, the root cause of poor sanitation. Lack of hand hygiene that impacts also on respiratory infections. And so, almost 2 million people are dying every year because of poorly managed water, sanitation and hygiene.”

 

((END ACT))

 

Gordon says countries need to recommit to the targets they have made to save those lives. He notes a major opportunity to do that will occur during an historic U.N. water and sanitation conference in March. For the first time in 50 years, he says, the global community will gather to review progress and make voluntary commitments to improve the water situation.

 

The report delves into the impact climate-related extreme weather events have on impeding the delivery of safe WASH services. Gordon says the report highlights the importance of climate resilience and adaptation to climate change.

((2ND GORDON ACT))

 

“And yet when we look at the policy response, whether it is climate resilient technologies which—there are simple things to avoid floods or to mitigate droughts. Simple risk management or simple technologies. These are not being put in place.”

 

((END ACT))

 

The WHO report calls on governments to dramatically increase investments to extend access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation services. It urges them to scale up support for WASH service delivery by putting in place monitoring systems, regulatory functions and capacity development.
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The World Health Organization says climate change is behind an unprecedented surge in the number of cholera outbreaks around the world this year.

At least 30 countries have reported outbreaks of the deadly disease this year, about a third higher than normally seen.

Philippe Barboza, WHO’s team leader for cholera and epidemic diarrheal diseases, said most of the large cholera outbreaks have coincided with adverse climate events and have been visibly and directly affected by them.

“Very severe droughts like, for example, in the Horn of Africa, in the Sahel but also in other parts of the world,” he said. “Major floods, unprecedented monsoons, succession of cyclones. So, most again, most of these outbreaks appear to be fueled by the result of the climate change.”

No quick reprieve is in sight. The World Meteorological Organization predicts the so-called La Nina climate phenomenon will last through the end of this year. The pattern, which cools the surface of ocean waters, is expected to continue well into 2023. That will result in prolonged droughts and flooding and increased cyclones.

Consequently, health officials warn large cholera outbreaks are likely to continue and spread to wider areas over the next six months. Barboza said preventing disease outbreaks will be a challenge.

He said a global shortage of vaccine has forced the WHO to temporarily suspend its two-dose strategy and switch to a single dose approach. That allows many more people to be vaccinated against cholera. However, he said it shortens the period of immunity against infection.

“So, the situation will continue to prevail for the months to come,” he said. “There is no silver bullet, magic solution and the producers are at the maximum production. … So, there is no hope that the situation will improve in the coming weeks or months.”

Barboza said lack of data makes it impossible to accurately determine the number of global cholera cases and deaths. However, he noted information from at least 14 countries indicates the average fatality rate is above 1%. He said the cholera fatality rate in heavily affected Haiti is around 2%.

Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease caused by consuming contaminated food or water. Treatments include oral rehydration. People with severe cases need rapid intravenous fluids and antibiotics. Cholera can kill within hours if left untreated.
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Russian and NASA engineers were assessing a coolant leak on Thursday from a Soyuz crew capsule docked with the International Space Station that could have been caused by a micrometeorite strike.

Dramatic NASA TV images showed white particles resembling snowflakes streaming out of the rear of the vessel for hours.

The coolant leak forced the last-minute cancellation of a spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts on Wednesday and could potentially impact a return flight to Earth by three crew members.

Leak posed no danger

Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos and the U.S. space agency said the leak on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft did not pose any danger to the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the space station.

“The crew members aboard the space station are safe, and were not in any danger during the leak,” NASA said.

It said ground teams were evaluating “potential impacts to the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft.”

“NASA and Roscosmos will continue to work together to determine the next course of action,” NASA said.

The TASS news agency quoted Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who heads the crewed space flight program for Roscosmos, as saying that the leak could have been caused by a tiny meteorite striking Soyuz MS-22.

“The cause of the leak may be a micrometeorite entering the radiator,” TASS quoted Krikalev as saying. “Possible consequences are changes in the temperature regime.”

“No other changes in the telemetric parameters of either the Soyuz spacecraft or the (ISS) station on the Russian or American segments have been detected,” Krikalev said.

NASA later added that the crew on the station “completed normal operations Thursday, including … configuring tools ahead of a planned US spacewalk on Monday.”

Soyuz MS-22 flew Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to the space station in September.

It is scheduled to bring them back to Earth in March and another vessel would have to be sent to the space station if Soyuz MS-22 is unavailable.

Prokopyev and Petelin had been making preparations for a spacewalk on Wednesday when the leak was discovered.

“The crew reported the warning device of the ship’s diagnostic system went off, indicating a pressure drop in the cooling system,” Roscosmos said. “At the moment, all systems of the ISS and the ship are operating normally, the crew is safe.”

NASA said the leak had occurred on the “aft end” of Soyuz MS-22, which is secured to the space station.

International collaboration

There are currently four other astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the space station in addition to Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin.

NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina were flown to the space station in October aboard a SpaceX spacecraft.

Space has been a rare avenue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington since the start of Moscow’s assault on Ukraine in February, and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia that shredded ties between the two countries.

The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of increased US-Russia cooperation following their Space Race competition during the Cold War.
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The United States is monitoring for new coronavirus variants as it braces for a potential outbreak of COVID-19 infections following Beijing’s easing of strict controls that kept the pandemic at bay in China.

“We have a very robust surveillance program that we use for travelers as people come in, in terms of identifying people who are infected, tracking variants,” Ashish Jha, White House coronavirus response coordinator, told VOA during a briefing with reporters on Thursday. “And if there are new variants that emerge, I’m confident that we will be able to identify them.”

Jha said the monitoring mechanism includes testing wastewater in the U.S. and through partners abroad.

China changes its approach

On Wednesday, Beijing announced major changes to its national pandemic response, moving away from its strict zero-COVID approach, which relied heavily on lockdowns and prompted protests across the country. The new guidelines no longer mandate health QR codes to enter public places and allow patients with mild cases to quarantine at home instead of in crowded government facilities.

A major COVID-19 outbreak in China would have unpredictable effects on the virus, said Xi Chen, Yale University professor of public health.

“The world’s most populous country includes a large number of immunocompromised people who can harbor the virus for months,” he told VOA. 

Those conditions, he said, “may produce variants of concern.”

However, Chen noted there may be a reduced risk of new variants spinning out of a Chinese outbreak.

“China has stuck with zero-COVID so long that its population has, by and large, never encountered omicron subvariants; people’s immune systems remain trained almost exclusively on the original version of the coronavirus, raising only defenses that currently circulating strains can easily get around,” he said. “It’s possible that there will be less pressure for the virus to evolve to evade immunity further.”

The World Health Organization has raised concerns that China’s 1.4 billion citizens are not adequately vaccinated, particularly its elderly and vulnerable populations.

Beijing has ramped up its immunization efforts, on average more than 1 million shots each day. But with holiday travel coming and the time needed to build up immunity after vaccinations, the window is narrowing, Chen said.

“Perhaps the coming two weeks will be the last opportunity to avoid accelerated virus transmissions throughout China.”

As it braced for new infections, China began selling Paxlovid, an oral COVID-19 treatment made by American company Pfizer this week.

Jha said that the deal was reached without the administration’s involvement but said that the U.S. offered to help China with vaccinations stands.

“We have been the largest donor of vaccines in the world, almost 700 million doses,” he said. “We stand ready to help any country that needs help.”

Winter preparedness plan

On Thursday, the White House issued what it is calling its COVID-⁠19 Winter Preparedness Plan.

“We don’t want this winter to look like last winter or the winter before,” Jha said.

In a statement, the White House said that while COVID-19 “is not the disruptive force it once was, the virus continues to evolve,” and the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows new cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all up in recent days.

The White House said in addition to free testing sites that already exist, beginning Thursday, all U.S. households can order a total of four at-home COVID-19 tests that will be mailed directly to them free. Free at-home tests also will be made available at government-assisted rental housing properties serving seniors and food banks.

The administration also is outlining to all governors the actions they should take to prepare for increased cases and hospitalizations expected during the winter.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press.
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China raced to vaccinate its most vulnerable people on Thursday in anticipation of waves of COVID-19 infections, with some analysts expecting the death toll to soar after it eased strict controls that had kept the pandemic at bay for three years. 

The push comes as the World Health Organization also raised concerns that China’s 1.4 billion population was not adequately vaccinated and the United States offered help in dealing with a surge in infections.

Beijing last Wednesday began dismantling its tough ‘zero-COVID’ controls, dropping testing requirements and easing quarantine rules that had caused mental stress for tens of millions and battered the world’s second largest economy.

The pivot away from President Xi Jinping’s signature “zero-COVID” policy followed unprecedented widespread protests against it. But, WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said infections were exploding in China well before the government’s decision to phase out its stringent regime. 

“There’s a narrative at the moment that China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden the disease is out of control,” Ryan told a briefing in Geneva.

“The disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Thursday China has “institutional advantages” to fight COVID.

“We will certainly be able to smoothly get through the peak of the epidemic,” he told a regular news briefing in response to White House national security spokesperson John Kirby saying that the U.S. was ready to help if China requested it.

There are increasing signs of chaos during China’s change of tack – with long queues outside fever clinics, runs on medicines and panic buying across the country.

One video posted online on Wednesday showed several people in thick winter clothes hooked up to intravenous drips as they sat on stools on the street outside a clinic in central Hubei province. Reuters verified the location of the video.

The COVID scare in China also led people in Hong Kong, Macau and in some neighborhoods in Australia to go in search for fever medicines and test kits for family and friends on the mainland.

For all its efforts to quell the virus since it erupted in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, China may now pay a price for shielding a population that lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly, analysts said.

“Authorities have let cases in Beijing and other cities spread to the point where resuming restrictions, testing and tracing would be largely ineffective in bringing outbreaks under control,” analysts at Eurasia Group said in a note on Thursday.

“Upward of 1 million people could die from COVID in the coming months.”

Other experts have put the potential toll at more than 2 million. China has reported just 5,235 COVID-related deaths so far, extremely low by global standards.

China’s stock markets and its currency fell on Thursday on concerns of the virus spread.

China reported 2,000 new symptomatic COVID-19 infections for Dec. 14 compared with 2,291 a day. The official figures, however, have become less reliable as testing has dropped. It also stopped reporting asymptomatic figures on Wednesday.

Concern for elderly 

China, which has said around 90% of its population is vaccinated against COVID, has now decided to roll out the second booster shot for high-risk groups and elderly people over 60 years of age. 

National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng said on Wednesday it was necessary to accelerate the promotion of vaccinations, according to comments reported by state media.

The latest official data shows China administered 1.43 million COVID shots on Tuesday, well above rates in November of around 100,000-200,000 doses a day. In total, it has administered 3.45 billion shots.

But one Shanghai care home said on Wednesday a number of its residents have not yet been vaccinated and considering their underlying medical condition, it has barred visitors and non-essential deliveries while stockpiling medicines, tests kits and protective gear.

“We are racking our brains on how to ensure the safety of your grandparents,” the Yuepu Tianyi Nursing Home wrote in a letter posted on its official WeChat account page.

Beijing has been largely resistant to western vaccines and treatments, having relied on locally-made shots. Pfizer’s oral COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid is one of the few foreign ones it has approved.

The treatment, however, has only been available in hospitals for high-risk patients, but signs have appeared in recent days that it may soon be made more widely available.

China Meheco Group Co Ltd’s stock jumped after it announced a deal to import the U.S. drugmaker’s treatment on Wednesday.

Economic conference

As the virus spreads, President Xi, his ruling Politburo and senior government officials began a two-day meeting to plot a recovery for China’s battered economy, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.

China’s economy lost more steam in November as factory output growth slowed and retail sales extended declines, both missing forecasts and clocking their worst readings since May, data on Thursday showed.

Economists estimate that China’s growth has slowed to around 3% this year, marking one of China’s worst performances in almost half a century. 
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A week after China dramatically eased its three-year-long zero-COVID policy of lockdowns and near-daily PCR testing, the country is experiencing its biggest wave of COVID-19 infections since the pandemic began in 2020.

But Ray Yip, an American epidemiologist and a former director of the China branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Professor Jin Dong-Yan, a virologist in the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Biochemistry, say the relatively mild nature of omicron, China’s high vaccination rate and people voluntarily staying home, could help China avoid a huge increase in deaths.

Yip, who is also a former head of the China office for UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jin, a respected virologist, explained to VOA’s Cindy Sui why the situation in China may not be as bad as feared.

These December 14 and 15 interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

VOA: What is going on in China’s hospitals?

Yip: Most hospitals in big cities right now are overrun, but they are overrun from basically people with symptoms that don’t have to go to the hospital, like fever and runny nose. The truth is, COVID is like any flu. Unless you’ve developed respiratory failure and you need to have higher-level care, you get better on your own. You just drink a lot of fluid and stay in bed. But in China, most people, most parents, believe every time your child or your family member has anything not well, you rush them to the hospital emergency room to get [an] IV. Half the people don’t know you can use something like ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and manage the fever yourself.  

So right now, is there an omicron outbreak in Beijing, in Shanghai, in every place? The answer is yes. But that doesn’t mean hospitals’ intensive care is overrun and the number of deaths of the elderly is shooting through the roof.

Jin: Most of the cases are mild. Some of them describe it as worse than the flu. That’s actually not very surprising because it’s just like the flu.

VOA: Could there be a lot of severe cases that we just don’t know about?

Jin: That’s not possible because the virus is very mild and the vaccination rate in the elderly is not very, very low. (According to government statistics, 86% of the elderly aged 60 or above have had two shots and 68% have had a third booster shot). It’s much higher than in February in Hong Kong (when a major outbreak occurred).

The rate of severe cases or deaths should not be that high … because 99.5% of the people will just have mild or no symptoms for omicron. It’s the same everywhere. As long as they do well in vaccinating the elderly and giving them oral antivirals, the number of severe cases and deaths can be avoided.

VOA: With so many new infections, is there a possibility that the same thing that happened in India will happen in China as omicron spreads, given that there are only 3.6 intensive care beds per 100,000 people in China?

Yip: I don’t think that will happen in China. Omicron doesn’t do that. Omicron causes symptoms of cold. It doesn’t cause pneumonia. It doesn’t make you have trouble breathing. It’s upper respiratory.

Jin: That’s completely different because it’s not the same virus and strain. That will not happen in Beijing. For most people, there won’t be need for respirators because it’s the same viral strain as in Inner Mongolia, and as you can see there are not that many deaths and severe cases there. The concept that the virus strain is particularly virulent and will kill a lot of people is wrong.

VOA: According to the government, 90% of the population has been vaccinated with two doses of Chinese vaccines, but a much lower percentage — 56% of the overall population, and just 40% of those 80 or older — have had a booster shot. Would there still be an increase in deaths among the most vulnerable people?

Yip: All those people having COVID now, they are not very old. So, the question is, will this become so pervasive, so rapid, that it will actually overwhelm the elderly population in a very short period of time? If that happens, then there are fears that what happened in Wuhan in the first few weeks in January 2020 will happen again, with bodies lying in the hallways, not enough hospital beds and respirators.

I really doubt these scenes will repeat themselves. My prediction is that even if China gets a very sharp curve, the outcome — in terms of overwhelming the hospitals and deaths — will not be as bad as what happened in Wuhan in 2020 because it’s a different virus. Omicron, even though it’s COVID, is much milder.

There will be 200,000 excess deaths, mostly elderly people. But if you spread that out over a huge country like China, that’s not huge.

Jin: There’s always a danger, but every country has to face that. It’s just that China is facing it all of a sudden. Sooner or later, there would be a tsunami, it’s not a big deal, but they do need to pay more attention to severe cases.  In reality, how they can deal with severe cases and identify them is difficult. If they can quickly deliver oral antiviral drugs to those who need it, or those with chronic underlying diseases, it will also save a lot of lives.

VOA: What can China do to avoid a large number of deaths?

Yip: They can minimize deaths by getting the elderly vaccinated and making sure everybody gets three shots. They can also soften the curve, by keeping the rise in cases spread out over a longer period of time. A sharp curve will result in many people getting very sick that might overwhelm the hospitals. But if there’s a gentle curve that goes up over a longer period of time, then the hospitals will be able to handle the caseloads.

With China’s curve, we just have to see. But my prediction is it may not be as bad as one assumes, and the reason for that is that most Chinese in the big cities are totally scared. Beijing right now is in a semi-imposed semi-lockdown. You can go anywhere you want, but people are not going, because everybody right now hears COVID is running amok. So, everybody is staying in their apartment, which is good. By doing that, they will actually make the curve more gentle, not as steep.

Jin: Actually, the most important thing is to educate the general public and explain the rationale of the new policy. They should tell people they don’t need to go to the hospitals, because if everyone infected goes to the hospitals, the hospitals will collapse at some point.

In terms of the curve, they want to have 60% of people infected in the first wave. That’s not possible if everyone stays home, because the virus will not spread anymore. It’s possible it’ll be like Taiwan and Singapore, they will see several waves. They hope to have 80% of the population infected in the second wave.

VOA: Is there a chance China might ride out this storm largely unscathed?

Yip: There’s a reasonable chance China actually might, if what I’m hoping or projecting comes true. As we mentioned earlier, a flatter curve allows the system to absorb the shock. We don’t know. I think you need to wait for another minimum of three weeks to tell. Omicron actually is the best thing that happened to the world. Without omicron, if the virus was still like the delta variant, the alpha, the Wuhan strain, you would be scared every place you go. Omicron immunized everybody. The whole continent of Africa was immunized by omicron.

Jin: We expect the severe cases will be low and they should be able to handle this.  If they cannot handle it, they should use other measures to flatten the curve. There are 101 measures to do this. They can close schools, shut down buses, metro systems, they can do everything.

VOA: So, if China also survives this omicron wave, would you agree with Chinese analysts’ assertions that China will have prevented millions of deaths with its zero-COVID policy, even though it has been blamed for hurting the economy and people’s livelihoods, while also restricting  freedom?

Jin: I think so because that’s the reality, because the most lethal waves are already over. Those are delta, alpha … They have saved millions of lives because they did the lockdown initially and it could have been much worse if they didn’t.

Yip: That is true. I’ll tell you why. China did this zero-COVID policy when the bad virus was around — the virus that killed a lot of people, the one you saw in India, in New York, in Italy, in many parts of the world. It killed a million Americans. Those were the older strains. So, China basically said, ‘I protect you during bad virus times, but we got a good virus now. I’m going to let you get infected. You will get sick. You will get a cold. But most of you, if you’re under 50, you have zero chance to die. If you’re over 60 and you’re immunized, you’re in good condition.’

So basically, China averted a major curve of COVID-related deaths. But I tell you, people in the West don’t like to hear that because it makes China look good. You should report it. What I’m telling you is based on epidemiology. It’s based on science. I’m not telling you based on politics. 
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