Infectious Disease Expert Calls Southern China Faster Recovered From The 2023 Pandemic

JAKARTA - Prof Zhong Nanshan, an infectious disease expert who attacks the respiratory tract, estimates that China's southern region will recover from the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2023.

However, before that, the area that is the entry point for international arrivals will experience the peak of the wave of COVID-19 cases in January-February 2023.

The senior researcher and his team, who have just completed an assessment of the latest development of COVID-19, reminded the importance of preventing the severity caused by the virus by promoting vaccination.

According to him, it usually takes two weeks for the vaccine to work effectively in an effort to prevent the spread of transmission during the Lunar New Year holiday homecoming season.

Quoted from Antara, Sunday, December 11, Zhong also considers the Omicron variant not terrible because 99 percent of cases can be cured within seven to 10 days.

By analyzing cases in several major cities in China, Zhong revealed that the severity of Omicron was less than 1 percent.

Even so, he warned that the COVID-19 pandemic had not ended unless pathogens had drastically decreased.

"This is the future trend of the evolution of the corona virus," he said.

He added that it was inappropriate to use death rates from other regions to estimate hundreds of thousands of people would die on mainland China due to the latest wave of cases.

"I don't believe that will happen. The vaccination rate in mainland China has reached 68.86 percent. Indeed, this is not enough, but can prevent deaths on a large scale," he said.

China's National Health Commission (NHC) on Saturday recorded 2,338 positive cases and 8,477 asymptomatic cases across the country.

On Saturday, according to NHC data, 39,391 positive patients were still receiving medical treatment and observations.