The sudden dismantling of China’s “zero COVID” policy last month means hundreds of millions of people are headed home for the Lunar New Year holiday for the first time since 2019. The crush of travel risks supercharging the world’s biggest COVID-19 outbreak, spreading it to every corner of the country.
Migrant workers, college students, educated urban elites and other travelers risk carrying the highly infectious Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 to swathes of rural China that have managed to evade the pandemic until now.
About 2.1 billion trips are expected to take place during the 40-day Spring Festival period, double the number from last year.
Photo: AFP
“There is a lot of jubilation around going home to celebrate the Chinese New Year, but that could also bring about tragedy for a lot of families,” University of California, Los Angeles epidemiologist Zhang Zuo-feng (張作風) said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) singled out COVID-19’s rural spread in a nationwide video address he held before the holiday, saying he is especially concerned about efforts to battle the disease in the countryside.
Health experts are worried that the virus could spread in vulnerable in villages with sparse healthcare infrastructure, creating worse outcomes than the outbreaks that have already strained hospitals, overwhelmed crematoriums and crippled the nation’s largest cities.
Rural China is particularly susceptible to harm from COVID-19, Zhang said.
Nearly 25 percent of residents are aged 60 or older, compared to 19 percent of the total population, a group that is comparatively less vaccinated and more likely to develop complications. Many people are unfamiliar with the virus, with no exposure or natural immunity to the infection.
Medical resources in remote areas are scarce. There are an estimated 1.62 doctors and nurses for every 1,000 people in rural China, compared with 2.9 doctors and 3.3 nurses nationally. Access to intensive care with experienced doctors and equipment to help gravely ill patients survive is often difficult to reach.
Health analytics firm Airfinity Ltd estimates China’s COVID-19 deaths to peak at 36,000 a day during the holiday. The firm initially anticipated two surges of infections, one before and one after the Chinese New Year celebration. Now it says unfettered New Year travel is likely to merge them into one massive wave.
The result is to become “a significant burden on China’s healthcare system for the next fortnight,” Airfinity analytic director Matt Linley said. “Many treatable patients could die due to overcrowded hospitals and lack of care.”
The virus has quickly raced through China’s megacities and highly settled regions. Henan, one of the country’s most populous provinces, said nearly 90 percent of its residents have been infected. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have all said their outbreaks have peaked.
Health authorities issued a slew of directives urging local governments to improve hospital preparation and help them work with rural clinics to handle patients with severe infections. The agriculture ministry is sending one oxygen concentrator and two pulse oximeters to village clinics across the country.
“The plans dedicated to COVID-19 control and prevention in rural areas are well devised, but how to implement them is a big problem,” former Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention chief epidemiologist Zeng Guang (曾光) said at a recent seminar.
Zhang said the lack of information about infections makes it difficult to predict the scope of severe disease and deaths ahead.
Regardless, he is concerned about consequences that could linger well after the joy from the reunions has faded and travelers have returned to jobs in distant factories and cities.
“This New Year travel could bring about inevitably catastrophic consequences for many families,” he said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion