COVID-19 infections in China have rebounded as a new immunity-evading variant is spreading; however, it has been treated as a cold, according to Chinese doctors.
Since mid-August, many netizens across China have reported on Chinese social media that either they or people around them have been reinfected with COVID-19.
A doctor in the southwestern megacity of Chongqing told The Epoch Times on Aug. 31 that now there are basically COVID-19-positive cases every day, which is more than in the previous few months. A doctor in Zhangzhou city in the southeastern province of Fujian also told The Epoch Times that he now sees patients who have been infected with COVID-19 for a second time—and even a third time—in outpatient clinics.
A resident in Tianjin posted: “I have been reinfected with COVID-19. Symptoms are similar to the first time, not lighter! The pain started in the throat and ended in the kidney. My joints hurt all over my body, and my right kidney hurt.”
A doctor in Beijing said in a post on Weibo on Aug. 28: “The chief physician of the Department of Respiratory Infection who instructed on how to use medication on WeChat was infected with COVID-19 himself with sore throat and headache. The virus is too contagious.”
A doctor in Fujian Province told The Epoch Times on Aug. 31 that the patients who are infected but don’t have a nucleic acid testing result are treated as if they were having a cold, but COVID-19 is more contagious.
A doctor in Wuhan also told The Epoch Times on Aug. 29: “After the COVID-19 was downgraded to a ‘Class B’ infectious disease in January, the outpatient clinic no longer conducts PCR testing, so now there is no epidemic data. Recently, many people come to the hospital because they are having a fever. Doctors can’t determine whether their fever was caused by common cold or other reasons.”
No Measures Taken as New Variant Spreading
EG.5, also known as Eris, is the dominant coronavirus subvariant in many provinces in mainland China, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on the social media platform WeChat on Aug. 19.“The proportion of the EG.5 variant among circulating coronavirus strains grew from 0.6 percent in April to 71.6 percent in August,” China’s CDC stated.
A subvariant of the Omicron XBB.1.9.2, Eris has spread to at least 52 countries since it was first detected in Indonesia in February. The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated it as a “variant of interest.”
EG.5’s prevalence is mainly because of its enhanced ability to escape immunity, reducing the neutralizing ability of antibodies produced by previous infections, the health agency said.
A staffer at Beijing CDC told The Epoch Times on Aug. 29 that there currently is no data on COVID-19 reinfections or related hospitalization, and no measures or related policies have been initiated to deal with the reinfections for the time being.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) suddenly abandoned its draconian zero-COVID restrictions and lockdowns in December 2022, without taking any preventive measures, which led to a massive outbreak of COVID-19 across the country and the death of a large number of people. China’s top virologists estimated that 80 percent of the populace was infected.
Meanwhile, the CCP downgraded COVID-19 to a “Class B disease with Class B level control” on Jan. 8. Now, the infections have resurged. However, the authorities haven’t notified the public to take any precautions.
Current affairs commentator Li Yuanhua told The Epoch Times on Aug. 29 that from the regime’s sudden abandonment of pandemic control in 2022 to its current treatment of the new round of infections as a cold, the CCP has always been following its own logic, which is to deal with the medical crisis with political means and attitude.
“It doesn’t respect life and doesn’t take proper measures to deal with the public health incidents based on the real situation because it thinks that politics is more important than everything else,” Mr. Li said. “The so-called politics is the stability of the CCP’s regime, regardless of the lives of ordinary people.”
