China Covid surge: Shanghai orders schools to close as funeral homes in Beijing struggle to catch up

Shanghai’s education bureau has mandated that primary, middle, and high school grades hold classes online starting Monday amid surging Covid-19 cases across major cities in the country following the easing of its stringent lockdown policies.

Kindergartens and childcare centres in the financial hub were also asked to shut all their in-person classes from Monday.

After days of massive unprecedented protests across the country, Chinalifted its strict draconian zero-Covid policies earlier this month that kept people in several cities under virtual house arrest.

Since lifting its travel restrictions, the country has seen a resurgence in the spread of Covid-19 with fear that the virus could spread rapidly throughout the country during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday.

Meanwhile, funeral homes in Beijing – home to over 22 million people – are reportedly struggling to keep up with the demand for services due to sick workers and an increased spread of the novel coronavirus.

China has also advised its population of 1.4 billion to nurse mild Covid-19 cases at home unless people’s symptoms become severe.

“We’ve fewer cars and workers now....we’ve many workers who tested positive,” an employee at a funeral home in Beijing told Reuters.

However, Associated Press reports that it is unclear if the increased demand for cremation services is due to a rise in Covid-19 related deaths after the Chinese government paused reporting its tally of Covid-19 deaths in the past 10 days.

Since Wednesday, China has also stopped reporting the number of asymptomatic cases prevalent in the country due to a lack of testing for those without symptoms.

Experts say the official figures provided by the country have become unreliable as less testing is being done after the easing of the zero-Covid policies.

China had also announced the deactivation of the “mobile itinerary card” health-tracking app, which it used to track the travel histories of its 1.4 billion population.

Earlier this week, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation estimated that China’s abrupt lifting of its ultra-strict Covid-19 control measures may lead to an explosion of cases and over a million deaths in the country by 2023.

A yet-to-be peer-reviewed analysis projected that cases may peak around 1 April, when deaths are expected to reach 322,000.

Gabriel Leung from the University of Hong Kong who led the study said China urgently needed strategies to prevent the “catastrophic” overburdening of health systems.

“Reopening at the status quo would result in a cumulative mortality burden of 684 per million,” researchers noted.

“However, safer exit from dynamic zero-Covid could be achieved by adopting a multi-pronged approach comprising vaccination, antiviral treatment, public health and social measures, and sequential reopening,” they said.

Last month another study by Airfinity, a London-based health analytics firm, had also made a similar estimate of between 1.3 million and 2.1 million deaths over 83 days following the lifting of China’s zero Covid policies.

“It is essential for China to ramp up vaccinations to raise immunity in order to lift its zero-Covid policy, especially given how large its elderly population is,” Airfinity’s Head of Vaccines and Epidemiology, Louise Blair had said.

“Subsequently, China would need hybrid immunity to allow for the country to brace future waves with minimal impact. This has proven effective in other countries and regions,” Dr Blair added.