Roving Periscope: World braces for the worst as 900 mn Chinese now Covid-infected

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: With the internal migration of hundreds of millions of Chinese beginning on January 7 for the Lunar New Year on January 22-23, over 900 million people in the Asian country are estimated to have already contracted infections because of the fresh resurgence of Covid-19 pandemic, the media reported on Saturday.

They include nearly all of the 22 million residents of the national capital, Beijing.

Recently, media reports projected around one million deaths in China because of Covid-19 in 2023.

According to official reports, nearly two billion trips are expected to happen across China during the 40-day-long festivities, and tens of millions of Chinese have already traveled from one place to another.

While nearly 76 percent of people in Beijing had been infected by December 22 last year, about 92 percent of them will have contracted Covid by the end of January 2023, reflecting the rapid spread of China’s latest outbreak, according to a study published on Friday in the journal Nature Medicine.

After the Communist government, facing widespread protests against it, abruptly abolished the three-year-old Zero Covid policy on December 7 last year, the virus has been spreading at the fastest pace. The study found the reproductive rate increased to 3.44 following the policy shifts, meaning one person with the virus can infect 3.44 others.

The rapid spread of Covid through Chinese households since the country decided to live with the virus last month has curbed nearly all economic activity and spurred reports of hospitals and crematoriums becoming overwhelmed.

The media reports, quoting a study by Peking university, said some 900 million people in China were infected with coronavirus as of January 11. This means, the BBC said, some 64 percent of the country’s population has the virus.

Gansu province, where 91 percent of the people are reported to be infected, is at the top, followed by Yunnan (84 percent) and Qinghai (80 percent).

A top Chinese epidemiologist also warned that cases will surge in rural China over the lunar new year.

The peak of China’s fresh Covid wave is expected to last two to three months, Zeng Guang, former chief of the Chinese Center for Disease Control, said.

At an event earlier this month, he said it was “time to focus on the rural areas,” in remarks reported in the Caixin news outlet. Many elderly, sick, and disabled in the countryside were already being left behind in terms of Covid treatment, he added.

As of now, hundreds of millions of Chinese are traveling to their hometowns, pilgrimage, and tourist centers, many for the first time since the pandemic began in January 2020—ahead of the Lunar New Year.

Despite global concern about fresh waves of the pandemic and widespread criticism, China stopped sharing daily Covid statistics after abandoning the Zero Covid policy last month.

Hospitals in big cities, where healthcare facilities are better and more easily accessible, have become crowded with Covid patients as the virus has spread through the country, BBC reported.

China’s central Henan is the only province to have given details of infection rates. Early in January, a health official said nearly 90 percent of the population had Covid, with similar rates seen in urban and rural areas.

However, government officials say many provinces and cities have passed the peak of infections.

The Lunar New Year holidays in China, which officially start on January 21, involve the world’s largest annual migration of people, BBC reported.