Streets in major Chinese cities were eerily quiet yesterday as people stayed home to protect themselves from a surge in COVID-19 cases that has hit urban centers from north to south.
China is in the first of an expected three waves of COVID-19 cases this winter, said Wu Zunyou (吳尊友), chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cases could multiply across the country if people follow typical travel patterns of returning to their home areas in a mass transit movement for the Lunar New Year holiday next month.
Photo: AP
China is also yet to officially report any COVID-19 deaths since Dec. 7, when the government abruptly ended most restrictions key to its “zero COVID-19” policy following unprecedented public protests against the protocol. The strategy had been championed by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
As part of the easing of the “zero COVID-19” curbs, mass testing for the virus has ended, casting doubt on whether officially reported case numbers can capture the full scale of the outbreak.
China reported 2,097 new symptomatic COVID-19 infections on Saturday.
In Beijing, the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 has already hit services from catering to parcel deliveries. Funeral homes and crematoriums across the city of 22 million are also struggling to keep up with demand.
Social media posts also showed empty subways in the city of Xian in the northwest, while Internet users complained of delays to deliveries.
In Chengdu, streets were deserted, but food delivery times were improving, a resident surnamed Zhang said, after services began to adapt to the surge in cases.
However, getting hold of antigen test kits was still difficult, she said.
Her recent order had been redirected to hospitals, she said, citing the provider.
In Shanghai, authorities said schools should move most classes online from today, and in nearby Hangzhou most school grades were encouraged to finish the winter semester early.
In Guangzhou, those attending classes online as well as preschoolers should not prepare for a return to school, the education bureau said.
Speaking at a conference in Beijing on Saturday, Wu said the current outbreak would peak this winter and run in three waves for about three months, according to a state media report of his speech.
The first wave would run from the middle of this month through the middle of next month, largely in cities, before a second wave starts from late next month to mid-February, triggered by the movement of people ahead of the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.
China is to celebrate the Lunar New Year starting on Jan. 21. The holiday normally sees hundreds of millions of people traveling home to spend time with family.
A third wave of cases would run from late February to mid-March as people return to work after the holiday, Wu said.
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