Beijing running out of fever medicine as Covid-19 pandemic spreads

Beijing was running out of medical supplies as the Chinese capital combated a rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak, health workers said, according to The Financial Times.

China’s pharmaceutical sector was scrambling to boost supplies as demand surged for fever, cold and Covid drugs amid fear among the public that the sudden lifting of the strict coronavirus restrictions could shoot up infections.

Amid reports of panic buying of fever medicine, financial news outlet Yicai, citing third-party data, said the average daily sales volume of home test kits had risen more than 400 times versus November.

Feng Zijian, a former official in China’s Center for Disease Control, told the China Youth Daily that up to 60 per cent of China’s population could be infected in the first large-scale wave before stabilising.

The country will probably face a large-scale outbreak in the next one to two months, state-owned magazine China Newsweek reported on Thursday citing health experts.

Some cities and regions had begun relaxing Covid controls, in moves that heralded a nationwide loosening of the earlier rules.

Foxconn pushed China to ease curbs: WSJ

Apple supplier Foxconn’s founder-director Terry Gou had warned China that the government’s zero-Covid stance would threaten the position of the world’s second-largest economy in the global supply chain, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The appeal, sent by Gou in a letter more than a month ago, played a major role in convincing China’s leadership to quickly reopen the economy and move away from its zero-tolerance Covid-19 policy, the report said on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. Gou’s office said in a statement that it “sternly denies” the facts in the report. Foxconn, which is the biggest assembler of iPhones, declined to comment, while China’s State Council Information Office could not be immediately reached for comment.

The Taiwan-based company’s Zhengzhou plant, which saw a month-long unrest in November, has lifted its “closed-loop” management curbs on Thursday. Reuters