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00:00Covid wave has peaked across the country. Could you elaborate on that? Yes. According to the most, the reason the official statistics just released a day ago shows that no matter whether we look at her, fewer Kleenex people are coming to those clinics throughout the country, no matter a rural urban already picked and also looking at those picking the ICU bars or admitted to regular bars. So these are all picked for those who are having severe conditions or will die eventually. I mean, the peak time was a little bit later than the peak time for the FEMA clinic, but all kicked off by the beginning of January, according to official statistics. But not only official statistics, but I told him many drawn on those that who to throughout China, to some very remote rural areas like in Sichuan, Guido and the Know. They told me that there are fewer clinics are almost empty. And even in the worst scenario, he also returned to that level in the past two years. So that's according to the conversation with the doctors. Now, is that the same as saying China has attained the herd immunity? Yes, so far. If we look at the lumber provided by the National Accounts Commission, is 80 percent of people being factually within a month. So that's unprecedented. But this is a very high immunity being built considering that China also have a vaccine induced immunity, although without a summer, many of the residents took that Lassa dose a year ago. But still, more than 90 percent of the people being vaccinated under the most recent statistics show that even for those under the age of 60, they took and 92 percent of them took a third of those recently. And the catch up, the momentum in the last the months after the reopening and people may be very more urgent to do so. So five days they reach about a 100 million dose being implemented. And the peak day was they had around the 20 to 24 million doses being implemented in a single day. So that's a record. All right. With the last time we were speaking a few weeks ago, you mentioned some data on what to watch would be any potential mutations or new strains of the virus. Have we seen any rate so far? In short, there is no boring new parents at the beginning. People very much worry about the representativeness of the data because in China and in China. In the beginning of the reopening, they only tested out wrong like the one hundred or one hundred forty cases. That's far from enough. But since then I think the catch up in terms of her geographic representativeness. Now we cover around the 25 provinces and also has a run on a 19 solvent whole genome sequences. And as we reported to our organization called GSK and the GSO is in collaboration with the WTO. And according to the estimate and analysis, they are there as they are closely resembling the known globally circulating virus. So far, you don't find any news, Red. Understood. Now we're going into, I think in about five, six weeks, it's the National People's Congress. That's everything from key economic targets and priorities. And, you know, a lot of the economies that we've spoken to here is that this call would have also exposed some of the sort of the holes and gaps within the public health care system. What would you recommend? China invest in as far as getting that capacity or upgrading its infrastructure is concerned as far as public health? Yes. This is a critical question. So I think although 80 percent of the population being, in fact, is getting some immunity. But we should remember that to the remaining people who are still quite the free, they are more having a higher risk. Usually they are the rebel and the hunker down and try to avoid the virus. If we look at, for example, Hong Kong and in many other part of the world, in the first few waves, most people who catch the virus were young and lower risk. But eventually the older people, more vulnerable, immune compromised people get the worries and there are more casualties like in Hong Kong and the fifth wave. More people die from the pipsqueak wave than the first of waves are combined. And the most often people like older persons living independently or living in nursing homes that he saw, they were in fact, they died in the fifth wave. So I think that's a NAMI. So China, I think, should have closely monitored a key population, especially those who are Covid 3 to protect those high risk groups. I think it's very important to ramp up the vaccine vaccination and also to call for antiviral drugs, especially, for example, of the packs Norway, which has been proved to be effective in reducing the hospitalization, saving the medical resources. It should program more. I think the reason recently there was a feed out in negotiation of putting that drug into the reimbursement list of the housing frenzy in China. I think China needs to consider if there is budget concern about the House insurers to cover this trial, maybe it could lower the reimbursement rate, especially for those who can't afford this to. And eventually to get this drug on the list is not only about price, but of securing the supply. And to everyone who need this drug, especially the remaining people, while having a higher risk of developing to severe conditions.

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Yale University's Chen on China Covid Situation

Xi Chen, Associate Professor of Health Policy & Economics at Yale University, discusses the latest Covid situation in China. He speaks with David Ingles on "Bloomberg Markets: China Open". (Source: Bloomberg)

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