Covid situation at low level after holiday, says China

Travel rose sharply as millions boarded planes, trains and buses after Beijing dismantled a zero-Covid policy in early December

A person wearing a protective suit sits at Beijing Railway Station as passengers wait to board a train to travel for Spring Festival ahead of Chinese Lunar New Year festivities. — Reuters file

By Reuters

Published: Mon 30 Jan 2023, 2:43 PM

China said on Monday that the Covid-19 situation in the country was at a “low level”, and that fever clinic visits due to the coronavirus during the Lunar New Year dropped about 40 per cent from before the week-long holiday.

“The overall epidemic situation in the country has entered a low level, and the epidemic situation in various places has maintained a steady downward trend,” National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng told a media briefing on Monday .

Travel domestically as well as in and out of China during the holiday period rose sharply as millions boarded planes, trains, buses and highways after Beijing dismantled an almost three-year zero-Covid policy in early December.

Passenger trips during the annual travel rush period reached 892 million between January 7 and January 29, up 56 per cent from 2022, a transport ministry official told reporters, but down 46.9 per cent from the same period in 2019.

China’s sudden relaxation of Covid restrictions was followed by a wave of infections across its 1.4 billion population. A prominent government scientist said on January 21 that 80 per cent of people had already been infected — making remote the possibility of a big rebound in cases in the coming months. Some experts had warned that Lunar New Year travel, known before the pandemic as the world’s largest migration of people, would trigger a wave of infections in rural areas less equipped to deal with them.

Last week, however, the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention said there was no significant rebound in cases during the holiday, the number of severe Covid cases and deaths had dropped, and no new mutant strains had been identified.

The CDC also said last week critically ill Covid cases in China fell 72 per cent from a peak early this month while daily deaths among Covid patients in hospitals dropped 79 per cent from their peak.