By Casey Hall
SHANGHAI (Portal) – China on Saturday marked the first day of “chun yun,” the 40-day Lunar New Year travel period known before the pandemic as the world’s largest annual migration of people, predicting a huge increase in travelers and the prepared spread of COVID-19 infections.
This Lunar New Year holiday, which officially begins on January 21, will be the first since 2020 without domestic travel restrictions.
Last month China saw the dramatic dismantling of its “zero-COVID” regime following historic protests against policies that included frequent testing, restrictions on movement, mass lockdowns and severe damage to the world’s second largest economy.
Investors are hoping the reopening will eventually revitalize a $17 trillion economy suffering from its lowest growth in nearly half a century.
But the abrupt changes have exposed many of China’s 1.4 billion people to the virus for the first time, sparking a wave of infections that has overwhelmed some hospitals, emptying pharmacy shelves of medicines and causing long lines to form outside crematoria.
The Department for Transport said on Friday it expects more than 2 billion passengers to take trips in the next 40 days, up 99.5% year-on-year and reaching 70.3% of 2019 trip numbers.
There was a mixed reaction to the news online, with some commenting welcoming the freedom to return to their hometowns and celebrate the Lunar New Year with family for the first time in years.
However, many others said they would not be traveling this year as concerns of infecting elderly relatives are a common theme.
“I dare not return to my hometown for fear of bringing back the poison,” said one such comment on the Twitter-like Weibo.
There are widespread concerns that the large exodus of workers from cities to their hometowns will lead to a surge in infections in smaller towns and rural areas, which are less well equipped with intensive care beds and ventilators to deal with them.
The story goes on
Authorities say they are strengthening grass-roots medical care, opening more rural fever clinics and establishing a “green channel” for high-risk patients, particularly the elderly with underlying health conditions, to be transferred from villages directly to higher-tier hospitals.
“China’s rural areas are vast, the population is large, and per capita medical resources are relatively insufficient,” said National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng on Saturday.
“There is a need to provide convenient services, speed up vaccination of the elderly in rural areas, and build grass-roots defense lines.”
PEAK INFECTION REACHED
Some analysts are now saying that the current wave of infections may already have peaked.
Ernan Cui, an analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics in Beijing, cited several online surveys suggesting that rural areas were already facing higher exposures to COVID infections than originally thought, with most regions already peaking in infections, noting that there is “not much difference between them” urban and rural areas.”
On Sunday, China reopened its border with Hong Kong and also ended the quarantine requirement for travelers from abroad. This effectively opens the door for many Chinese to travel abroad for the first time since borders closed almost three years ago, without fear of being quarantined on their return.
Jillian Xin, who has three children and lives in Hong Kong, said she was “incredibly excited” about the opening of the border, especially as it means seeing family more easily in Beijing.
“For us, the opening of the border means that my children can finally meet their grandparents for the first time since the pandemic began,” she said. “Two of our kids have never been able to see their grandpa, so we can’t wait for them to meet up.”
China’s rise in cases has sparked concern internationally, with more than a dozen countries now requiring travelers from China to be tested for COVID. The World Health Organization said Wednesday that China’s COVID data underrepresents the number of hospital admissions and deaths from the disease.
Chinese officials and state media have defended their handling of the outbreak, downplaying the seriousness of the surge and denouncing overseas travel requirements for its residents.
On Saturday in Hong Kong, people who had made an appointment had to queue for about 90 minutes at a center for PCR tests, which are required for travel to countries like mainland China.
TREATMENT IN THE FOREGROUND
For much of the pandemic, China has poured resources into an extensive PCR testing program to track and trace COVID-19 cases, but the focus is now shifting to vaccines and treatment.
In Shanghai, for example, the municipal government announced on Friday an end to free PCR tests for residents from January 8.
A circular released by four ministries on Saturday signaled a reallocation of financial resources for treatment and outlined a plan for public finances to subsidize 60% of treatment costs by March 31.
Meanwhile, sources told Portal that China is in talks with Pfizer Inc to secure a license that will allow domestic drugmakers to manufacture and distribute a generic version of the US firm’s COVID antiviral drug Paxlovid in China.
Many Chinese have tried to buy the drug abroad and have it shipped to China.
On the vaccine front, China’s CanSino Biologics Inc announced that it has started trial production for its COVID mRNA booster vaccine, known as CS-2034.
China has relied on nine domestically developed vaccines approved for use, including inactivated vaccines, but none have been adapted to target the highly transmissible Omicron variant and its offshoots currently in circulation.
The overall vaccination rate in the country is over 90%, but the rate for adults who have received booster shots falls to 57.9% and for those aged 80 and over to 42.3%, according to government data released last month.
China reported three new mainland COVID deaths on Friday, raising the official death toll from the virus to 5,267 since the pandemic began, one of the lowest in the world.
International health experts believe Beijing’s narrow definition of COVID deaths does not reflect a true number of deaths, with some predicting more than a million deaths this year.
(Reporting by Casey Hall in Shanghai, Julie Zhu in Hong Kong and Kevin HuangAdditional reporting by Jindong ZhangEditing by Tony Munroe and Frances Kerry)