Chinese city dwellers return home for the holidays as COVID concerns increase
For the Lunar New Year holidays, travelers loaded down with luggage flocked to rail stations and airports in China’s megacities on Monday. Health experts worry that this could exacerbate a raging COVID-19 outbreak in areas less prepared to handle it.
Early in December, China abruptly dropped its “zero COVID” policy after three years of stringent anti-virus regulations, allowing the virus to spread unchecked among its 1.4 billion citizens.
Authorities reported on Saturday that nearly 60,000 COVID patients had passed away in hospitals between December 8 and January 12. This is a significant increase from earlier estimates that the World Health Organization had criticized for failing to adequately capture the scope and severity of the outbreak.
According to a health expert, even those figures certainly don’t include many people who pass away at home, particularly in rural areas with less developed healthcare infrastructure. Numerous experts predict that this year, the disease will claim more than one million lives in China.
The state media has been flooded with reports of rural hospitals and clinics strengthening their supplies of medicines and equipment in advance of the Lunar New Year vacations, also known as the Spring Festival, which officially begin on January 21.
A doctor in Shaanxi province was quoted in a local news outlet, Red Star News, as saying, “The peak of COVID infection in our hamlet has passed, but the Spring Festival is approaching and there are still left-behind villagers, especially the elderly, at risk of secondary infection.”
I would feel more sure if there were more antiviral and other medications available, the doctor continued.
Pulse oximeters, fingertip devices frequently used during the pandemic to swiftly check oxygen levels, will be sent to every village clinic in addition to fever medications and oxygen supply, according to China’s National Health Commission.
