China's Covid toll could near 1 mn as govt rapidly abandons curbs: Study

According to the new report, explosive growth of infection rates nationwide could also lead to new variant

Almost 1 million people in China may die from Covid-19 as the government rapidly abandons pandemic curbs, according to a new study by researchers in Hong Kong.
 

In the absence of a mass vaccination booster campaign and other measures to reduce the impact of the virus, some 684 people per million would die in a nationwide reopening, according to the report, which was co-authored by Gabriel Leung, the former dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, and two of his colleagues. 

That would amount to about 964,400 deaths, based on China’s population of 1.41 billion, according to Bloomberg