Researchers say the rule changes will lead to a rise in infections that could overwhelm hospitals.
Credit: Kevin Frayer/Getty
The changes move China “in the right direction”, says Adam Chen, a public-health researcher at the University of Georgia in Athens. They try to balance the need to protect the most vulnerable people from infection, while also reducing the economic and social harms of lockdowns, he says. Furthermore, the guidelines do not lift testing and quarantine requirements for international travellers, which “doesn’t have a rationale if the objective is no longer zero COVID”, says Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong.Many people in China live in densely populated high-rise buildings, where it will be difficult to limit transmission.
China doesn’t have a strong system for primary medical care system, such as a network of general practitioners, so people go to hospital for mild conditions, says Xi Chen, who hopes more details on how the government plans to triage care will emerge in the coming days.
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