coronavirus pandemic could be worse this year than it was in 2020. By the beginning of March, the death toll from Covid-19 could rise to 5 million – from just under 2 million on Thursday – according to figures calculated by a team from China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), People’s Liberation Army and public health research institutes.
The researchers, led by professor Xu Jianguo from the CDC, said in a study published on January 8 in the peer-reviewed journal Disease Surveillance that the Chinese government and the public should brace for more external shocks. “The development of the pandemic is hard to foresee, but a numerical estimate by modelling can provide some useful information,” Xu said.
