Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani joins the Live show to discuss rising COVID-19 cases in China following the rollback of its zero-COVID policy.

Video Transcript

- We have to talk about the latest in China as well. We were just talking about with Meg, all of the potential trends here in the U.S. But obviously, China, when it comes to pandemic, is where we were at the very beginning.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Yeah, that's a fair assessment. And also, in terms of their strategy, how they're continuing to roll back on the zero-COVID policy, and really reducing testing asymptomatic case reporting and the like. So we're not getting the full picture kind of like what we're dealing with here in the U.S.

But as of right now, there are some really concerning estimates out there. China alone saying that in the first 28 days of the month, they could have had close to 250 million cases or 18% of the population being impacted. Meanwhile, we've seen estimates that they could be seeing up to a million cases per day, and close to 5,000 deaths per day, and with estimates reaching to really 4 million cases by March. And that's really a strong number.

We've never seen these numbers for China to date, because they haven't necessarily been reporting them to the like. And it really goes back to the discrepancy between what these numbers say, and what the projections say, and then, what the visuals are. We've been seeing those disturbing images of body bags piling up, ambulances outside funeral homes and the like, and hospital wards filling up anecdotally, all of this also leading to a shortage in the number of medications that are available. So reports feeding into the black market as well, when it comes to medication access to help curb, or help treat some of the symptoms of COVID. So really, a concerning picture for China right now when it comes to COVID surge.

- Definitely concerning. Thanks for breaking down. Anjalee Khemlani, we appreciate it.