China says no new COVID-19 deaths after changing criteria - CNA

"PARTICULARLY BUSY"

From the country's northeast to its southwest, crematorium workers have told AFP they are struggling to keep up with a surge in deaths.

Beijing last week admitted the scale of the outbreak has become "impossible" to track following the end of mandatory mass testing.

But authorities are determined to push ahead with re-opening, with the central city of Xi'an Tuesday joining several other major population centres in calling for infected people with no symptoms to go to work as normal.

Crematoriums in multiple Chinese cities declined AFP interview requests on Wednesday, with one in the northwestern city of Xi'an saying they were "particularly busy".

In the central city of Changsha, two companies specialising in burial clothing said they had seen an uptick in customers.

One proprietor said a COVID-19 outbreak was having "a slight effect" on his business, adding that he had been taking more orders for deceased "older people" than normal.

Others presented a more varied picture, with a staff member at a funeral services firm in the southern city of Guangzhou telling AFP that the number of customers "was always a little higher in winter".

And some were cagey when asked about the impact of COVID-19, with another such employee in the megacity of Chongqing saying it was "not easy to talk too much about this" at present.

"WE MUST ACT QUICKLY"

A leading Chinese health expert warned Tuesday that the capital will face a surge in cases over the next two weeks, which will continue until the end of January.

"We must act quickly and prepare fever clinics, emergency and severe treatment resources," Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert from Peking University First Hospital, told the state-run Global Times.

The US has said the surge of infections in China has become a matter of international concern - and offered to share vaccines to stem the soaring COVID-19 cases.

"We know that any time the virus is spreading, that it is in the wild, that it has the potential to mutate and to pose a threat to people everywhere," State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday.

Beijing has rebuffed the offer, insisting that the virus is under control and that "China is continuously optimizing its prevention and control measures".

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2022-12-21 09:53:57Z
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