Beijing reports first Covid deaths since lifting of restrictions: Report

Beijing on Friday reported two deaths due to Covid-19, the first since most pandemic-related restrictions were lifted on December 7, Singapore Daily reported. Two former Chinese state media journalists succumbed to the virus on December 8 and December 15, financial magazine Caixin reported.

Yang Lianghua, an ex-People's Daily reporter, died on December 15, aged 74 while Zhou Zhichun, an ex-China Youth Daily editor, passed away on December 8, aged 77, the Caixin report added.

However, Singapore Daily reported that China's national health authority has not reported any official Covid deaths since lifting multiple domestic epidemic control restrictions. The last official deaths were reportedly on December 3 in Sichuan and Shandong provinces.

After three years of stringent ‘Zero Covid’ policy directed by Chinese President Xi Jinping-led government, which triggered massive civilian stir across the country, citizens heaved a sigh of relief when the restrictions were eased. State media said that the government permitted home quarantine for Covid-19 close contacts and scrapped the Covid-19 test rule in a majority of public avenues.

In some of the highlight protests, anti-Xi slogans were raised during civilian demonstrations in Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Beijing and several other cities of China. In last week of November, hundreds of people in Shanghai, China's biggest city and financial centre, commenced publicly protesting against the government's stringest Covid control restrictions.

However, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that the strict policy of years had ceased to bring results anyway. The UN health agency's head of emergency programmes, Mike Ryan was quoted as saying by CBS News that the “explosion of cases in China is not due to lifting of Covid-19 restrictions”. “The explosion of cases in China had started long before any easing of the zero-Covid-19 policy,” he was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, a new study by researchers in Hong Kong has revealed that over two million people in China may succumb to the virus after the government's rapid easing of restrictions. The report added that in the absence of mass vaccination booster campaign and other measures to cut down the impact of the virus, some 684 people per million would die in a countrywide reopening.

The report was co-authored by Gabriel Leung, the former dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, and two of his colleagues.