COVID Deaths Double in China: 11K Daily
Amid soaring COVID-19 infections in China, the United States is considering sampling plane wastewater to track emerging virus variants. Health experts in the United Kingdom estimate approximately 11,000 people per day are now dying from the disease in China.
The new death toll doubles the estimate from the week before.
Three infectious disease experts who spoke with
The Guardian said the aircraft wastewater sampling proposal would do a better job of tracking new virus variants and slowing their entry into the U.S. than the new travel restrictions announced this week.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
announced on Wednesday that air passengers flying to the United States from China will need to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test or documentation of recovery.
The new restrictions come as U.K.-based health data firm
Airfinity said approximately 11,000 people were likely dying of COVID-19 in China each day, which doubles its estimate from the week before.
COVID-19 infections began to spread throughout China in November, picking up steam this month after Beijing discontinued its zero-COVID policies including routine PCR testing and publication of asymptomatic case data.
Since Dec. 1, deaths from COVID-19 in China have likely reached 110,000, with infections likely reaching 20.4 million, Airfinity said in a Thursday statement.
The company said it expects China’s COVID-19 infections to hit an initial peak of 3.7 million cases a day on Jan. 13.
On Thursday, the European Union’s health agency said the bloc-wide introduction of mandatory COVID-19 screenings for travelers from China was “unjustified” and pointed to the “higher population immunity in the EU/EEA, as well as the prior emergence and subsequent replacement of variants currently circulating in China.”
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on China to be more transparent with detailed data on the country’s pandemic situation, in a series of tweets.
“In the absence of comprehensive information from China, it is understandable that countries around the world are acting in ways that they believe may protect their populations,”
Tedros wrote.
Chinese authorities have officially reported just 10 COVID-19 deaths since Dec. 7, when the government made an abrupt U-turn on its virus policy. Airfinity expects deaths to peak at about 25,000 a day on Jan. 23, with cumulative deaths totaling 584,000 in December.
Given China’s lack of candor, testing wastewater from airlines would offer a clearer picture of how the virus is mutating, according to Dr. Eric Topol, a genomics expert and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.
Collecting wastewater from planes from China “would be a very good tactic,” Topol told The Guardian, adding that it was necessary for the U.S. to upgrade its surveillance tactics “because of China being so unwilling to share its genomic data.”
Shame China did not jump on the vaccine bandwagon.