Is China’s 75% of population is covid affected? Read study

Key Takeaways:

• The third-most populous province in China, Henan, has nearly 90% of the population infected with covid, according to local health officials.
• Other local and provincial officials also provide information that is very different from what the federal government does.
• Beijing also opened the Hong Kong border on Sunday and lifted the quarantine that had been placed on all foreign visitors.

According to local health officials, the covid infection has now spread to nearly 90% of the population in Henan, China’s 3rd most populous province.

Provincial official Kan Quancheng revealed the number, which came to about 88.5 million people, at a press conference, p.

Since giving up its zero-Covid policies in December, China has been dealing with an unprecedented rise in cases.

The action followed rare protests against lockdowns, quarantines, as well as mass testing.

Since China’s prior zero-Covid policy had successfully decreased cases, most of Henan’s infections likely occurred over the previous few weeks. Mr Kan did not offer a timeline for when each of the infections occurred, though.

He claimed that on December 19, fever clinic attendance in the province of Henan reached its peak and then “showed a continuous downward trend.”

The federal government’s Covid data are in stark contrast to the provincial data from Henan.

According to official statistics, only 120,000 of the 1.4 billion individuals in the nation have been infected, and 30 people have passed away since the change in Covid policy.

In the meantime, authorities in mainland China reported 3 Covid fatalities on Sunday, one more than the day before.

However, since mass testing is no longer needed and the definition of Covid deaths has been narrowed, government data is no longer perfect in capturing the true scope of the outbreak.

The information provided by other local and provincial officials also differs greatly from that of the federal government. A senior health official in the port city of Qingdao reported on Christmas Eve that 500,000 people were contracting the disease daily. Those case numbers quickly dropped from news articles.

Chinese health officials declare that they will not include Pfizer’s antiviral Covid medicine Paxlovid in their fundamental medical insurance programmes due to the high cost cited by the US company.

Since the count of Covid cases in China shot up last month, the medication currently covered by the country’s extensive healthcare insurance programme until March 31 has seen a sharp rise in demand.

The company stated in a statement that the Chinese government and other relevant parties would continue to be involved in Pfizer’s efforts to “secure as well as adequate supply” of the medication in China.

On Sunday, Beijing also opened the border with Hong Kong and lifted the quarantine imposed on all foreign visitors.

As part of the first wave of pre-holiday travel, 34.7 million people travelled domestically on Saturday, according to official data. According to state media, this represented an increase of much more than a 3rd from the previous year.

As the nation celebrates Lunar New Year this month and millions of individuals travel from big cities to visit elderly relatives nationwide, infections are predicted to soar.

According to the officials, more than two billion individual journeys are anticipated to occur.