(Minghui.org) During the Liaoning Province Pandemic Prevention and Control Conference on December 24, 2022, mayors from all 14 cities in the province provided updates on the Covid situation in their jurisdictions. They also shared the difficulties they encountered and discussed plans of how to tackle those issues.
Shenyang, the capital city of Liaoning, had 50% of its residents already infected. Among the municipal government employees, 80% of them tested positive, and only 12% were still reporting to work. In addition, 70% of the city’s medical workers were infected, but 65% of the medical workers were still working.
The infection rate of Shenyang residents is expected to reach 80% by mid-January, so are those of the four counties under the administration of Shenyang.
Out of the 14 cities that reported at the conference, only Shenyang did not complain about the fever medicine shortage. The problems other cities faced included: blood bank supply had dropped to the warning line; funeral homes had reached full capacity; there were insufficient medical personnel and medications, as well as shortages of raw materials needed to make fever medicine. Although the infection rate in the countryside was only between 10-20% now, it will likely increase given the upcoming travel rush during the Chinese New Year holiday season.
There are broad concerns that new mutations could lead to variants that are more infectious and deadly. “China has a population that is very large and there's limited immunity. And that seems to be the setting in which we may see an explosion of a new variant,” remarked Johns Hopkins infectious disease professor Stuart Campbell Ray on December 25. “When we've seen big waves of infection, it's often followed by new variants being generated.” Like a boxer, the virus “learns to evade the skills that you have and adapt to get around those.”
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) abruptly ended its zero-Covid policy on December 7 and positive cases have since exploded across the country. Despite the surging cases, the National Health Commission (NHC) renamed the Chinese term for COVID-19 from “novel coronavirus pneumonia” to “novel coronavirus infection,” and downgraded the disease from Class A to Class B on December 26. As a result, quarantine is no longer needed to manage this newly named infectious disease.
Experts believe the CCP’s sudden move from extreme zero-COVID to no restrictions at all is posing significant risks to ordinary citizens who are left to fend for themselves. South Korea has announced to enhance COVID monitoring of travelers from China.
Various social media posts indicated that many Shenyang residents have died from the virus. There was so many dead in such a short period of time that all the crematoriums in Shenyang were at capacity. Families had no way but to turn to nearby cities, such as Fushun or Liaoyang, for the cremation of their loved ones. Even so, they had to use connections to get a place in the queue.
A document circulated online indicates that new crematories are being planned in Shenyang. This document was titled, “The Second Announcement of the First Bid Section of the Equipment Purchase of the Funeral Parlor Project in Shenbei New District, Shenyang City.” The announcement said that Shenbei New District Civil Affairs was calling for proposals to build a new crematory in the district. The investment is 41.77 million yuan on land of 43,994.9 square meters (10.9 acres). The building will occupy 6,573.79 square meters with 6 cremation furnaces and 1,700 ash deposit boxes. The project was scheduled to start on December 25, 2022, and end on January 25, 2023.