BEIJING, Jan 12 (Reuters) – People in China fretted on Thursday over the possibility of spreading COVID-19 to elderly relatives as they planned to return to their hometowns for holidays that the World Health Organization says will can trigger a violent outbreak.
The Lunar New Year holiday, which officially begins on Jan. 21, comes after China last month abandoned a strict anti-virus regime of mass lockdowns that sparked widespread frustration and escalated into historic protests.
This abrupt turn of events triggered COVID in a population of 1.4 billion that lack natural immunity, having been protected from the virus since it first emerged in late 2019, and includes many elderly people who have not been fully vaccinated.
The outbreak spreading from China’s megacities to rural areas with weaker medical resources is overwhelming some hospitals and crematoria.
With little official data from China, the WHO said on Wednesday it will be a challenge to control the virus during a holiday period considered the world’s largest annual migration of people.
Further warnings from top Chinese health experts for people to avoid elderly relatives during the holidays soared to the most read item on Weibo, similar to China’s Twitter, on Thursday.
“This is a very pertinent suggestion, go back to hometown… or put seniors’ health first,” wrote one user. Another user said that he wouldn’t dare visit grandma and would leave gifts for her at the door.
“It’s almost New Years and I’m afraid she’ll be lonely,” the user wrote.
More than two billion passengers are expected to take trips during the broader Lunar New Year period, which begins Jan. 7 and lasts for 40 days, China’s Ministry of Transport said. That’s double last year’s trips and 70% of views in 2019, before the outbreak of the pandemic in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
CRITICAL MISSING DATA
The WHO and foreign governments have criticized China for not being forthright about the scale and severity of its outbreak, which has prompted several countries to impose restrictions on Chinese travellers.
China recorded five or fewer deaths a day last month, numbers inconsistent with the long lines seen at funeral homes. The country did not report COVID death data on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Liang Wannian, head of a COVID expert panel under the national health authority, told reporters that deaths could only be counted accurately after the pandemic ended.
While international health experts have predicted at least 1 million COVID-related deaths this year, China has recorded just over 5,000 since the start of the pandemic, a fraction of what other countries have reported when restrictions were lifted.
Looking beyond the death toll, investors are betting that China’s reopening will reinvigorate a $17 trillion economy suffering its slowest growth in nearly half a century.
That took Asian inventories to a seven-month high, strengthened China’s yuan against the US dollar and boosted global oil prices on hopes of renewed demand from the world’s biggest importer.
TRAVEL CHALLENGES
After three years of isolation from the outside world, China on Sunday abandoned quarantine mandates for incoming visitors, in a move that should eventually spur outbound travel as well.
But concerns about China’s outbreak have led more than a dozen countries to demand negative COVID test results from people arriving from China.
Among them, South Korea and Japan have also limited flights and require testing on arrival, with passengers who test positive being quarantined.
In an escalating tussle between regional rivals, China, meanwhile, has stopped issuing short-term visas and lifted transit visa exemptions for South Korean and Japanese nationals.
Despite Beijing lifting travel restrictions, outbound flight bookings from China were at just 15% of pre-pandemic levels in the week after the country announced it would reopen its borders, travel data firm ForwardKeys said Thursday. fair.
Low airline capacity, high airfares, new pre-flight COVID-19 testing requirements from many countries and a backlog of passport and visa applications pose challenges as the industry seeks recovery, Vice President said. ForwardKeys Insights President Olivier Ponti in a statement.
Hong Kong Airlines said on Thursday it does not expect to return to capacity until mid-2024.
Bernard Orr, Liz Lee and Jing Wang, reporting in Beijing; Written by John Geddie; Edition of Lincoln Feast.
Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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