Shanghai Fears 5.43-M Residents Infected With COVID

A Shanghai hospital has told its staff to prepare for a "tragic battle" with COVID-19 as it expects half of the city's 25 million people will get infected by the end of next week while the virus sweeps through China largely unchecked, Zoey Zhang and Bernard Orr reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: Despite numerous outbreaks across the country, Beijing has insisted on sticking with its homemade low-efficacy vaccines and has shunned Western brands.

After widespread protests against strict mitigation measures, China this month began dismantling its "zero-COVID" regime, which had taken a great financial and psychological toll on its 1.4 billion people.

China's official death count since the pandemic began three years ago stands at 5,241 - a fraction of what most other countries faced - but now looks bound to rise sharply. China reported no new COVID deaths for a second consecutive day for Wednesday, even as funeral parlor workers say demand for their services has increased sharply over the past week.

Authorities - who have narrowed the criteria for COVID deaths, prompting criticism from many disease experts - confirmed 389,306 cases with symptoms.

In a separate report, Martin Quin Pollard and Liz Lee disclosed that the Shanghai Deji Hospital, posting on its WeChat account late on Wednesday, estimated there were about 5.43 million positives in the city and that 12.5 million in China's main commercial hub will get infected by the end of the year.

Some experts say official case figures have become an unreliable guide as less testing is being done following the easing of restrictions.

More than 5,000 people are probably dying each day from COVID-19 in China, health data firm Airfinity estimated, offering a dramatic contrast to official data from Beijing on the country's current outbreak.

The UK-based firm said it had used modeling based on regional Chinese data to produce figures that also put current daily infections in the country at above a million. Its estimates were "in stark contrast to the official data which is reporting 1,800 cases and only seven official deaths over the past week," it said in a statement.

China's National Health Commission (NHC) did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters for comment. On Thursday it reported no new COVID-19 deaths and 2,966 new local symptomatic cases for Dec. 21.

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