Last Updated: January 31, 2023, 14:48 IST
People ride on a subway during the morning rush hour following the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, in Beijing, China (Image: Reuters)
Chinese officials claim that they did not record any rebound in the number of infections during the Lunar New Year period
Chinese officials said that the current Covid wave is nearing its end citing that no new surges were recorded during the lunar new year period.
The lunar new year period in China this year witnessed an increase in travel compared to last year as China has lifted most restrictions following the lifting of Covid Zero.
Chinese government said that it witnessed rise in tourism and hospitality activity during the recent lunar new year period compared to last year. There was a rebound in factory activity for the first time in four months.
Even though China was swamped by Covid cases in early December, recent data on hospitalizations and fever clinic admissions shows that infections peaked in the first weeks of January.
There were concerns that infections would soar as millions would travel to their native places – in rural China – to celebrate lunar new year, which according to some experts, the largest act of human migration in the world.
Many Chinese workers travel to their homes for the festivities only for this occasion but this was also barred for the last three years due to the pandemic.
The Chinese Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Tuesday that there is no obvious rebound in Covid cases.
Chinese ministry of transport said that travel in the first three weeks of January was 75.8% higher than in 2022, however, this was only around half the number of trips made during the lunar new year in 2019, when the pandemic had not struck.
Analysis firm Trivium said that travel would increase by 99.5% year-on-year over the whole 40 days and reach 70.3% of pre-pandemic levels.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised China’s growth outlook higher for 2023, to 5.2% from 4.4% in the October forecast. It slashed the growth rate to 3% due to zero-Covid lockdown policies in 2022.
The purchasing managers’ index (PMI) also stood at 50.1, compared with a reading of 47.0 in December, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday.
However, the Chinese health authorities urged people to reconsider visiting elderly relatives of those relatives who are yet to be infected.
(with inputs from the Guardian and Reuters)
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