As Chinese travelers packed their luggage into train stations and airports in major cities on Monday, heading to their villages and towns for the Lunar New Year holiday, health experts feared a further spread of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed tens of thousands in recent weeks.
After three years of strict and stifling controls, in early December China abruptly abandoned its “zero Covid” policy aimed at eliminating the pandemic, allowing the virus to spread exponentially among the country’s 1.4 billion people.
And the competent authorities had revealed, last Saturday, that nearly 60,000 people infected with the Corona virus had died in hospitals between December 8 and January 12, according to Reuters.
One health expert said those numbers likely excluded many victims who die at home, especially in rural areas with weaker medical systems.
Many experts predicted more than a million people would die in China from the disease this year.
The World Health Organization welcomed Beijing’s announcement of the statistics of injuries and deaths, and renewed its appeal for more detailed data.
The organization said a few days ago that China announces very few deaths from the virus.
On Saturday, the organization said that its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had spoken with the director of China’s National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowu, about the latest outbreak of the disease, which the organization said was similar to what has been seen in other countries.
“The announced data indicate a decrease in the number of injuries, hospitalizations and those in need of intensive care,” she said in a comment on Beijing’s figures.
Ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, also known as the “Spring Festival,” which officially begins on January 21, state media have published several reports of rural hospitals and clinics boosting their supplies of medicines and medical equipment.
“The peak of COVID-19 infection has passed in our village, but the Spring Festival is approaching, and there are still many residents, especially the elderly, who are at risk of infection,” a doctor in Shaanxi Province told Red Star News.
He continued, “I would be more confident if antivirals and other drugs were well available.”
In addition to fever medicine and oxygen supplies, China’s National Health Commission said it will provide every village clinic with pulse oximeters, fingertip devices to quickly check blood oxygen levels.
“overcrowded stations”
In a related context, eyewitnesses said that the main train station in Beijing was crowded with passengers who left the capital in recent days.
The official news agency Xinhua reported that temporary night train services were added in the more populous city of Shanghai to meet the needs of travelers to the eastern province of Anhui.
On Saturday, the number of daily arrivals to gambling halls in Macao exceeded 55,000, the highest daily toll since the epidemic began.
In Hong Kong, local authorities said they will raise the number of people who can pass through designated land border control points to the mainland to 65,000 per day between Jan. 18 and Jan. 21.
The Chinese Ministry of Transport has reported that it expects more than two billion trips in the weeks leading up to the New Year holidays.
The boom in travel in China has raised expectations of a rebound in the world’s second-largest economy, which is suffering from the lowest growth rates in nearly half a century.
These hopes helped Asian stock markets rebound on Monday, after adding 4.2% to last week’s gains.
China’s blue-chip index rose 0.6%, while global oil prices were also supported by expectations of a recovery in demand from the “Dragon Country”, the world’s largest importer of crude.
Analysts say Chinese data on economic growth, retail sales and industrial production due this week will be bleak, but markets will likely look further to see how China’s reopening can boost global growth.
