China Claims For The COVID-19 Trends Have Decreased After The Lunar New Year Holiday

Passengers at Beijing West Railway Station. (Wikimedia Commons/ way fong)

JAKARTA - Chinese authorities announced on Monday the country's COVID-19 situation was at a low level, while clinical visits due to the coronavirus during the Chinese New Year fell by about 40 percent from before the week-long holiday.

"The total epidemic situation in the country has entered a low level, and the epidemic situation in various places continues to experience a steady downward trend," National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng said at a news conference on Monday.

Domestic travel and Chinese entry and exit during the holiday period increased sharply as millions of people boarded planes, trains and buses, after Beijing abruptly removed its zero-COVID policy for nearly three years in early December.

Passenger travel during the annual travel busy period reached 892 million between January 7 and January 29, up 56 percent from 2022, a transport ministry official told reporters, but fell 46.9 percent from the same period in 2019.

It is known that the sudden easing of COVID-19 restrictions in China was followed by a wave of infections across its entire population of 1.4 billion. A leading government scientist said on January 21, 80 percent of people had been infected, making the possibility of a major increase in cases in the coming months to be small.

Previously, some experts had warned that the Chinese New Year's journey, known before the pandemic as the world's largest human migration, would trigger a wave of infections in rural areas that were less prepared to deal with them.

Last week, however, China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said no significant increase in cases during holidays, severe number of COVID-19 cases and deaths had decreased, and no new mutant strains were identified.

The CDC also said last week that critically ill COVID cases in China fell 72 percent from their peak earlier this month, while daily deaths among COVID patients in hospitals fell 79 percent from their peak.

However, some global experts say China's reported data on COVID-related deaths may be much lower than the actual number because they do not include those who died at home, while some doctors say they are not advised to refer to COVID as the cause of death.