Shanghai hospital warns of ‘tragic war’ with spread of Covid

A Shanghai hospital has told staff to prepare for a “tragic battle” with Covid-19 and estimated that half of the city’s 25 million people will be infected by the end of next week as the virus ravages China.

After widespread protests against strict containment measures, China this month began abolishing its “Covid zero” regime, which has done massive financial and psychological damage to its 1.4 billion people.

China’s official death toll since the outbreak began three years ago is 5,241 – a fraction of what most other countries have faced – but now it looks set to rise sharply.

China reported no new Covid deaths for the second day in a row on Wednesday, although funeral home officials said demand for their services had increased last week.

The authorities, which tightened the criteria for Covid deaths after criticism from many disease experts, confirmed 389,306 cases with symptoms.

Some experts say official case numbers have become an unreliable guide, as fewer tests are done after restrictions are eased.

The British health data firm Airfinity said this week that infections in China are likely to be more than a million a day, with deaths at more than 5,000 a day, a “major contrast” to official figures.

Airfinity said it looked at data from China’s regional provinces and noted that cases were increasing the fastest in the capital Beijing and southern Guangdong province.

Shanghai Deji Hospital estimated in a WeChat post on Wednesday night that there are about 5.43 million positive cases in the city, and that 12.5 million people will be infected by the end of the year in China’s main business centre.

“Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and this year’s Lunar New Year are doomed to be unsafe,” the private hospital, which has around 400 employees, says.

“In this tragic war, all of Greater Shanghai will fall and we will infect all the hospital staff! We will infect the whole family! It will infect all our patients! We have no choice and we cannot escape.”

The post was no longer available on WeChat as of Thursday afternoon. One person who answered the hospital’s main phone line said they could not immediately comment on the post.

Shanghai residents faced a two-month lockdown that ended on June 1, with many losing their income and struggling to meet their basic needs. During these two months, hundreds of people died and hundreds of thousands became infected.

On Thursday, many areas of Shanghai were nearly as empty as then, many residents went into lockdown, and businesses had to close after employees fell ill.

“All of our employees are sick,” said a supermarket employee named Wang as he closed the doors. He said he hopes to reopen on December 30.