- Nicholas Young
- BBC
Expectations of an increase in the number of Covid infections in China with the celebrations of the Lunar New Year
About 900 million people in China have been infected with Covid since January 11, according to a study issued by Peking University.
The study estimates that 64 percent of the Chinese population are infected with Covid.
The study arranged Chinese provinces according to the percentage of infections. In first place was Gansu Province, where 91 percent of the population is reported to have been infected.
After Gansu, Yunnan Province came with an injury rate of 84 percent, then Qinghai Province with an injury rate of 80 percent.
And a prominent epidemiologist in China warned of a rise in the number of infections in rural areas with the celebration of the Lunar New Year.
China’s COVID-19 infection rates are expected to continue to peak for two to three months, said Zeng Guang, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese travel to their villages to celebrate with their families the Lunar New Year, which begins on January 23. And many of these Chinese are doing so for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
China has stopped issuing daily data on the number of Covid infections since it announced it would stop adopting a zero-Covid strategy.
But hospitals in cities – where health care facilities are better – have become overwhelmed with Covid patients as the disease spreads across the country.
Earlier this month, Zeng Guang said it was time to focus on rural areas.
Zeng added, in remarks to a local newspaper, that many elderly, sick and disabled people in rural China do not receive treatment for Covid.
A health official in Henan Province said earlier this month that 90 percent of the province’s population had been infected with Covid, with similar rates observed in urban and rural areas of the province.
However, government officials say that many Chinese provinces and cities are past the peak stage.
The Lunar New Year celebrations in China witness the largest annual migration process in the world. Amid expectations that two billion Chinese will travel to their families, including ten million who have already begun their journey.
Last month, China suddenly announced the end of the zero-Covid strategy, and opened its borders from last Sunday.
Official data indicates that five or fewer people have died per day over the past month from Covid-19. However, these numbers do not correspond with the long lines seen in funeral homes, nor with the reports of deaths announced on social media platforms.
And last December, Chinese officials said they planned to issue monthly rather than daily reports on the country’s Covid situation.
The World Health Organization said that China, which had stopped reporting Covid-19 deaths since last Tuesday, was largely concealing the real numbers of deaths from Covid-19.
China’s foreign ministry responded Thursday that Beijing has been publishing data on COVID-19 transparently and in accordance with the law.
International health experts had expected that the number of deaths in China due to infection with Covid would reach at least one million deaths last year only, but China’s official reports indicated that five thousand deaths due to infection with Covid since the beginning of the epidemic – in one of the lowest rates in the world.
