Via The Guardian: China Covid: experts estimate 9,000 deaths a day as US says it may sample wastewater from planes. Excerpt:
The United States is considering sampling wastewater taken from international aircraft to track any emerging new Covid-19 variants as infections surge in China, as UK-based health experts estimate about 9,000 people a days are now dying of the disease in China.
The proposed of testing wastewater by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would provide a better solution to tracking the virus and slowing its entry into the US than new travel restrictions announced this week, three infectious disease experts said.
The US and a number of other countries have said travellers from China will require mandatory negative Covid tests.
Their comments came as UK-based health data firm Airfinity said about 9,000 people in China were probably dying each day from Covid, nearly doubling its estimate from a week ago.
Covid infections started to sweep across China in November, picking up pace this month after Beijing dismantled its zero-Covid policies including regular PCR testing on its population and publication of data on asymptomatic cases.
Cumulative deaths in China since 1 December likely reached 100,000, with infections totalling 18.6m, Airfinity said in a statement on Thursday. It used modelling based on data from Chinese provinces before the recent changes to reporting cases were implemented, it said.
Airfinity expects China’s Covid infections to reach their first peak on 13 January with 3.7m cases a day.
Their figures were in contrast to the several thousands of cases reported by Chinese health authorities a day, after a nationwide network of PCR test sites was largely dismantled and authorities pivoted from preventing infections to treating them.
The European Union’s health agency said on Thursday it believed the EU-wide introduction of mandatory Covid screenings for travellers from China was currently “unjustified”, pointing to the “higher population immunity in the EU/EEA, as well as the prior emergence and subsequent replacement of variants currently circulating in China”.
But in a series of tweets, the World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, renewed his appeal to China to be more forthcoming with detailed data on the pandemic situation in the country.
“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.
