City eastern China logs over 200,000 cases amid Covid outbreak
A city in eastern China’s Zhejiang province logged more than 200,000 Covid cases until Tuesday, the local government reported on Thursday, an indication of the rapid spread of the infection in the country since stringent Covid-control rules were lifted in early December.
Zhejiang province’s Quzhou city reported 210,000 infections until Tuesday, local authorities said. It also saw a record of 25,375 cases on December 21, “an increase of 384 times compared with December 7, when 66 cases were reported”.
Infection rates in the city of 2.3 million people, as in the rest of the country, have shot up since China abruptly eased its zero-Covid policies on December 7, a local official was quoted as saying by The Paper, a state-run digital newspaper, on Thursday.
Liao Lijun, from the Quzhou municipal health commission, said the city will enter the peak period of infection at the end of December, reaching the first wave peak in around January 1. It will then enter a period of plateau, and may reach the second wave peak at the end of January, one week after the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year, which falls on January 22, he said.
“At the same time, a peak of severe disease may occur about a week after the infection peak,” Liao said.
“A variety of variants of Omicron in the city were circulating at the same time, mainly BA.5.2 and the proportion of BF.7 increased, worth paying attention to,” according to report.
The rare official Covid-19 figures were released by a local government even as overwhelmed hospitals and packed crematoriums were reported across China.
China’s national health commission (NHC) has stopped releasing national data on fresh infections.
The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will now release data once a month from January 8, according to an announcement from earlier this week.
Infection from China’s most populous cities like Beijing and Shanghai have not been released by the government.
The government, according to state-run tabloid Global Times, launched a second round of surveys to gather information on the situation of residents infected with the virus in places like Beijing, Henan, Hainan and Sichuan provinces. The Sichuan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention released the results on December 24.
“According to the results released so far, the infection rate in Sichuan has exceeded 63.5% which is 16.59% higher than the previous survey,” the report added.
“As of December 25, a total of 158,506 people had taken part in the survey, covering 183 cities and counties in 21 cities and prefectures. According to the survey, only two of 21 regions had an infection rate of less than 50%. Moreover, the infection rate of 54.91 %in rural areas is lower than that of 65.42% in urban areas,” the Global Times report said.
China to lift flight restrictions
China will end the over two-year-long control measures— “circuit breaker” and “Five One” policies— for inbound international flights starting January 8, pushing for the resumption of international passenger flights, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said on Wednesday.
“No more flights will be categorised as high-risk. The 75 of seat requirements for inbound flights will also be lifted. No more closed-loop management, quarantine or nucleic acid test results are required for inbound flight air crew and staff,” a CAAC statement was quoted as saying in Chinese state media.
Under the “circuit breaker” rule, the carriers’ operations were suspended for two weeks if five or more passengers tested positive for Covid-19 when they landed in China. If 10 or more passengers test positive, the suspension period was extended to four weeks.
“According to the ‘Five One’ policy, domestic airlines had to reduce their international routes to one per country and cap their number of flights at no more than one per week, while foreign carriers were allowed to maintain only one air route to China and operate no more than one flight a week,” the state-run China Daily newspaper reported.