Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

Had an email from a chinese client the other day apologising for not coming back to us. Saying that with the relaxation of covid protocols everyone is now catching it for the first time and they're all at home sick.

My team of 20 in Shanghai currently has 12 people off sick with covid and another 5 working from home as they have covid but aren't ill. Very very difficult to buy paracetamol or anything like that. It's a total, total shit show. Local governments are telling people to go back to work even if they're sick - one of my team called me to ask if he can stay at home until he's better (obvs I said yes).
There's a run on paracetamol etc here in Singapore as mainland Chinese are buying it all to send back to China.

Umm.....are things not good in China?

It's going to be awful. Lots of old people not properly vaccinated - I can't remember the figure for sure but I think only 40% of old folk have been fully vaccinated. And that's with Chinese-made vaccines which are nowhere near as effective as the ones we've got.

My colleague from Chengdu is back in Beijing for work and yesterday he said "everybody is sick with COVID".

He also said everybody is scared of catching COVID because they've been hiding from it (in his opinion).