Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: At a time the world is barely coming to terms with the pandemic amid increasing vaccination, China, where it began in early 2020, has warned of a combination of two pandemics—Covid-19 and influenza—in the coming winter and spring seasons.
So far, China has fully vaccinated nearly 1000 million of its 1400 million population, followed by India, which has also vaccinated an equal number, fully or partially.
The twin-pandemic—or twindemic—is likely to hit China in the coming winter, according to government-controlled media.
Warning about the potential of the twin menace, the Chinese health officials asked the people to take all measures to prevent influenza (flu) as its activity in the southern provinces in the country has increased since September.
On Friday last week, the health department notified the local officials to strengthen influenza prevention during the flu season, coupled with the risk of Covid-19, media reported.
The Chinese health officials had already warned about the risk of ‘imported’ Covid-19 infections because of the high incidence of respiratory infections in winter.
On Saturday last week, 19 ‘imported’ Covid-19 cases and one locally transmitted infection were reported, Chinese news agency Xinhua said.
The next day (Sunday), China’s National Health Commission said they received the newly added local case from Xilin Gol League, north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Incidents of influenza in the southern and northern parts of China have been on the rise since March, compared to the same period last year.
The Global Times reported that the Covid-19 and respiratory infectious diseases such as influenza can be combined and bring a potential “twindemic” during this upcoming winter and the next spring.
As winter is set to begin, the Chinese health officials have appealed for strengthening, monitoring, and early warning mechanisms, immunizing key groups, promoting multi-disease prevention, standardizing epidemic treatment, and extensive publicity and mobilization.
It said clusters of cases in the last flu season occurred in schools, childcare institutions, and other venues despite an overall prevalence of influenza staying relatively low.
Besides, the health officials have urged the key institutions to strengthen efforts to detect, report, and deal with cluster cases as early as possible.
Also, they emphasized the need to improve the convenience of influenza vaccination services and enhance procurement and deployment management of vaccines and information management of vaccination data.