COVID-19 Symptoms Much Worse Than Those of Influenza: Chinese Patients

This picture shows health workers moving a Covid-19 patient on a stretcher in the emergency ward of the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University in China's southwestern city of Chongqing on Dec. 22, 2022. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

While a new wave of COVID-19 is sweeping across China, Zhong Nanshan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said on Dec. 15 that COVID-19 should be renamed “COVID flu,” as current variant Omicron’s fatality rate “has dropped to a very low [level]” and is equivalent to that of the “seasonal flu,” according to Cailianshe, a state-run financial media mouthpiece based in Shanghai.

Zhong’s remarks triggered backlash among Chinese netizens.