Almost 90% of people in China’s third most populous province have now been infected with Covid-19, a top local official has said, as the country battles an unprecedented surge in cases.
Kan Quancheng, director of the health commission for central Henan province, told a press conference that “as of January 6, 2023, the province’s Covid infection rate is 89%”.
With a population of 99.4 million, the figures suggest about 88.5 million people in Henan may now have been infected
Visits to fever clinics peaked on 19 December, Kan said, “after which it showed a continuous downward trend”.
The opening of China’s borders on Sunday was one of the last steps in the dismantling of the country’s zero-Covid regime, which began last month after historic protests and has led to a huge wave of infections.
Covid cases are expected to soar further as the country celebrates lunar new year later this month, with millions set to travel from big cities to visit vulnerable older relatives in the countryside.
In the first wave of pre-holiday travel, official data showed 34.7 million people travelled domestically on Saturday – up by more than a third compared with last year, according to state media.
While Beijing’s move to drop quarantine requirements is expected to boost outbound travel, many nations are demanding negative tests from visitors from China, seeking to contain an outbreak that is overwhelming many of China’s hospitals and crematoriums.
Officially, China reported just 5,272 Covid-related deaths as of 8 January, one of the lowest rates of death from the infection in the world.
But the World Health Organization has said China is under-reporting the scale of the outbreak and international health experts estimate more than 1 million people in the country could die from the disease this year.
China’s top health officials and state media have repeatedly said Covid infections are peaking across the country and they are playing down the threat now posed by the disease.
90% of people in China province infected with Covid
