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Eight in 10 folks in China have now been contaminated with Covid-19, a distinguished authorities scientist has claimed.
Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist of China’s Heart for Illness Management and Prevention, mentioned on Saturday — the eve of the Lunar New Yr — that the current “wave of epidemic has already contaminated about 80% of the folks” within the nation of 1.4 billion folks.
His declare got here amid considerations the journey rush that takes place across the Lunar New Yr vacation interval — typically dubbed the ‘world’s largest human migration’ — may unfold the virus to the countryside and trigger a second wave of infections.
However Wu, talking on his private social media account, mentioned this state of affairs was unlikely as so many individuals had already caught it.
“Within the subsequent two to 3 months, the potential of a large-scale Covid-19 rebound or a second wave of infections throughout the nation could be very small,” Wu mentioned.
China’s Ministry of Transport estimates over 2 billion passenger journeys will happen through the 40-day Lunar New Yr season as folks throughout the nation return to their hometowns for household reunions for the primary time with out home journey restrictions for the reason that begin of the pandemic over three years in the past.
Chinese language state broadcaster CCTV reported on Sunday that greater than 26 million passenger journeys had been taken on the eve of Lunar New Yr.
That’s solely half of the variety of vacationers from the identical day in 2019, previous to the Covid-19 pandemic, however 50.8% larger than 2022, it mentioned.
Greater than 4.1 million folks traveled by practice and 756,000 folks by air for vacation reunions on the day earlier than the beginning of Lunar New Yr, CCTV added.
The nation’s highway transport system registered greater than 20 million passenger journeys on the identical day, 55.1 % larger than the quantity from 2022.
As of Friday, China’s transport system had dealt with over 560 million passenger journeys within the first 15 days of the 40-day ongoing Spring Competition journey rush through rail, freeway, water, and air, up 47.9% from the identical interval final 12 months, in accordance with CCTV.
Skepticism over an infection figures
Beforehand, analysis by the Nationwide College of Improvement at Peking College had steered greater than 900 million folks, or 64% of the Chinese language inhabitants, had been “seemingly” to have been contaminated with Covid-19 as of January 11.
The college’s analysis additionally steered the epidemic peaked throughout a lot of the nation on December 20, about 13 days after China started easing its Covid restrictions.
By the top of December, infections had peaked in all places within the nation, in accordance with the analysis.
Chinese language well being authorities have made related claims, saying on Thursday that visits to clinics for fever and Covid hospitalizations in China have declined since their peaks in late December and early January respectively.
In response to the authorities, the variety of Covid sufferers needing important care in hospitals has additionally peaked.
Almost 60,000 folks with Covid died in Chinese language hospitals between December 8 and January 12 after China abruptly scraped its “zero-Covid” insurance policies, in accordance with authorities knowledge.
Nonetheless, the World Well being Group’s government director for well being emergencies Mike Ryan suggested earlier this month that the numbers launched by China “under-represent the true impression of the illness” by way of hospital and ICU admissions, in addition to deaths.
In response to an internal estimate from the nation’s prime well being officers, within the first 20 days of December virtually 250 million folks in China could have caught Covid. If right, the estimate — which CNN can not independently verify — would account for roughly 18% of China’s inhabitants.
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