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China’s new Covid wave expected to peak in June at 11 million cases a week
- Surge being fuelled by Omicron variant XBB likely to be much smaller than winter outbreak, according to health data firm Airfinity
- But it ‘could still lead to a large number of deaths because of the size of China’s ageing population’, epidemiologist says
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China’s latest Covid-19 wave is likely to peak this month at 11 million cases a week, according to UK-based health data firm Airfinity.
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The new outbreak – driven by the Omicron variant XBB – is expected to be far smaller than the massive wave of infections that ripped through the country in winter after Beijing ended its zero-Covid restrictions.
“Our modelling estimates the wave will peak at the beginning of June at around 11 million per week, with 112 million people being infected during this resurgence,” Airfinity said.
That compares to Chinese respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan’s estimate in May that cases could reach 65 million a week by the end of June – six times higher than Airfinity’s projection.
Zhong did not say if his estimate included asymptomatic cases, but Airfinity said its model was a forecast of symptomatic cases only.
There is no official data available on the scale of the current wave. The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) stopped releasing weekly data such as positive test rates and fever clinic visits in early May when the World Health Organization said Covid-19 no longer constituted a global health emergency.
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