China today witnessed the beginning of the 40-day period known in Chinese as “chunyun”, the largest annual migration in the world, which happens every year during the Lunar New Year, which in this 2023 of the end of the ‘zero COVID’ policy will fall between January 21 and 27.
Estimates put around 2,090 million trips this year between January 7 and February 15, an increase of 99.5% compared to 2022, the Asian giant’s Ministry of Transport published this Friday.
The growth in the volume of passengers is considered a response to the announcement by the authorities at the beginning of December with which they launched the dismantling of the ‘zero COVID’ policy.
The restrictions that accompanied the strict policy had been in force for almost three years and consisted of confinements where cases were registered, the closure of borders, the isolation of all those infected and their close contacts, and constant PCR tests on the population.
Thousands of people gathered on station platforms across the country, still fearful of the pandemic, but wanting to travel to their family homes, most of them in rural areas.
Some rural areas that have to guarantee the “medicine supply” during the Lunar New Year as an increase in COVID cases is expected in non-urban areas due to the flow of travelers caused by the “chunyun”, according to an expert from the National Health Commission last Tuesday.
The rapid spread of the virus throughout the country after withdrawing the ‘zero COVID’ policy has cast doubt on the reliability of the official data on infections and deaths, which have registered only a handful of recent deaths from the disease despite the fact that localities and provinces they have estimated that a significant proportion of their populations have been infected.
China announced at the end of December that it will reopen its borders tomorrow, Sunday, January 8, for the first time since March 2020.
As of the same day, COVID will cease to be a category A disease in China, the level of maximum danger and for whose containment the most severe measures are required, to become a category B, which contemplates more lax control, thus marking in practice the end of the ‘zero COVID’ policy, dismantled by the authorities after protests took place.
Source: EFE
Source: Gestion
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