Shanghai and more than a dozen other cities in China are now in full or partial lockdown as the country faces the largest spike in COVID-19 cases to date during the pandemic. But amid a rapid increase in cases of the ultra-transmissible omicron variant and China’s relatively low vaccination coverage among its elderly, some experts are scratching their heads at the lack of reported deaths.
In Shanghai, a city of about 26 million that serves as the country’s financial center, residents are running out of patience as they enter a second week of complete, draconian lockdown. There are videos of people circulating online screaming from their apartments and berating officials about food shortages. There are reports of people being denied medical care and forced into overcrowded quarantine facilities. At the start of the lockdowns, officials were criticized for separating parents of young children, including breastfed infants.
China reported more than 200,000 infections in Shanghai since the outbreak began last month. The vast majority are said to be mild or asymptomatic. So far, Chinese officials have reported that only one case in the city has been considered serious and no deaths from COVID-19 have been reported.
That’s despite China’s failure to achieve high vaccination levels among its elderly population, who are most at risk for serious illness and death from COVID-19. Only about half of people aged 80 and over in China have been fully vaccinated, and even fewer have received booster doses. Earlier this year, Hong Kong, which had a comparably low vaccination rate among its older adults, saw an equally severe spike in omicron cases and recorded one of the highest daily death rates in the world.
In an interview Monday on CNBC’s Squawk BoxScott Gottlieb, a former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner and current Pfizer board member, expressed skepticism about China’s reported numbers. “Looks like they’ve lost control of this [outbreak] in Shanghai. There are far more infections than are reported,” he said. “The data coming out of that is unbelievable. They claim … only one serious case and no deaths – we know that’s not true.”
Gottlieb pointed to previous reports from The Wall Street Journal and others of outbreaks in aged care hospitals that have left dozens dead. A hospital worker who spoke to the WSJ last month recalled parking half a dozen hearses at the hospital gate overnight. “I was terrified. I said, ‘Look, look, those are for dead bodies,'” the worker told the newspaper. Shanghai has 4 million residents over 65, making it one of the oldest in China, the WSJ noted.
