BEIJING/WASHINGTON: Cities across China scrambled to install hospital beds and build fever screening clinics on Tuesday (Dec 20) as authorities reported five more deaths and international concern grew about Beijing's surprise decision to let the virus run free.
China this month began dismantling its stringent "zero-COVID" regime of mass lockdowns after protests against curbs that had largely kept the virus at bay for three years but at significant costs to society and the world's second-largest economy.
Now, as the virus sweeps through a country of 1.4 billion people who lack natural immunity having been shielded for so long, there is growing concern about possible deaths, virus mutations and the impact on the economy and trade.
"Every new epidemic wave in another country brings the risk of new variants, and this risk is higher the bigger the outbreak, and the current wave in China is shaping up to be big," said Alex Cook, vice dean for research at the National University of Singapore's Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.
"However, inevitably China has to go through a large wave of COVID-19 if it is to reach an endemic state, in a future without lockdowns and the economic and political damage that results."
US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Monday the potential for the virus to mutate as it spreads in China was "a threat for people everywhere".
Beijing reported five COVID-related deaths on Tuesday, following two on Monday, which were the first fatalities reported in weeks. In total, China has reported just 5,242 COVID deaths since the pandemic emerged in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, a very low toll by global standards.