In rural areas, where services are relatively poor, many people are left behind, including the elderly, the sick and the disabled, Zeng said. Experts expect infections in rural areas to increase around the Chinese New Year, which begins on January 21. Then hundreds of millions of Chinese travel from the cities to their hometowns in the countryside. The World Health Organization (WHO) warned this week of the dangers of this huge wave of travel.
The coronavirus has been spreading rapidly in the country with a population of around 1.4 billion since the government backed away from its zero-Covid policy after mass protests and lifted strict restrictions and lockdowns in early December. Around 900 million people are said to be infected with the corona virus, according to a study by the University of Beijing, according to the BBC. The number refers to the key date of January 11th.
64 percent of the population infected
The study further estimates that 64 percent of the country’s population is infected with the virus. The three hardest-hit provinces are Gansu, where 91 percent of the population is thought to be infected, followed by Yunnan at 84 percent and Qinghai at 80 percent, according to Beijing University.
According to estimates by the London-based data processor Airfinity, around 3.6 million people are currently infected every day in the world’s most populous country, while there are over 20,000 deaths every day. According to these estimates, more than 300,000 people have died since the beginning of December. According to the projections, the number of CoV deaths could increase to 1.7 million by the end of April.
Borders open again
The WHO this week expressed the view that China is far from reporting all CoV deaths in the country. Chinese authorities have been reporting five or even fewer CoV deaths a day for the past few weeks, contrasting with images of long lines outside funeral homes and the amount of body bags coming out of overcrowded hospitals.
The Chinese borders, which had been closed for three years, have also been open again since Sunday. Since then, 490,000 entries and exits have been registered per day, an immigration official said on Friday. 250,000 of them were entries, 240,000 exits. 1.35 million people have also applied for a passport or visa for Hong Kong or Macau since January 8th.
Foreign trade negative for the third time in a row
The CoV situation and weak global demand again weighed heavily on Chinese foreign trade in December. Exports fell for the third time in a row – by almost ten percent in December. Imports also fell by 7.5 percent. Overall, foreign trade recorded a minus of 8.9 percent in December.
In 2022 as a whole, China’s exports increased by seven percent compared to the previous year, which is mainly due to the even better situation in the first half of the year. Imports also increased slightly by one percent for the year as a whole. The Chinese foreign trade surplus for the year reached a new record value of 878 billion US dollars (around 809 billion euros). Economists assume that China’s economy will recover this year. After the CoV wave has been overcome, growth could pick up again significantly from the second quarter.
