A medical worker in a protective suit collects a swab sample from a man at a nucleic acid testing site in Shanghai, China. File picture: Reuters, Aly Song
CHINA’s Covid-19 incidence hit three peaks before partially returning to the levels registered early December when Beijing started to lift restrictions and a new wave of the pandemic hit the country, Chinese National Health Commission senior official Yu Yanhong said yesterday.
China passed three peaks of Covid-19 incidence on December 23, January 2 and 5, Yu told a press conference.
The first peak was characterised by a large number of patients seeking medical help over complaints of fever, the second by an increase in the number of calls for an ambulance, and the third by the number of patients with severe symptoms, the official said.
The number of complaints of high temperature on January 17 decreased by 94% and returned to the level registered prior to December 7. The number of emergency calls and patients with severe symptoms fell by 44% and 44.3% on January 17, she said.
In December, China's government started to gradually ease its "zero tolerance" policy toward the pandemic, which had been the strictest in the world for almost three years. It had negative impact on global economy, supply chains, tourism and intergovernmental exchanges. On January 8, obligatory PCR testing and centralised isolation for people arriving in China were cancelled.
At the same time, the country has faced an increase in Covid-19 infections, forcing a number of countries, including the United States, Italy, Japan, and South Korea, to tighten measures against passengers arriving from China.
SPUTNIK