BEIJING (Reuters) -China rang within the Lunar Recent 12 months on Sunday with its people praying for health after three years of stress and financial hardship under the pandemic, as officials reported almost 13,000 recent deaths attributable to the virus between January 13 and 19.
Queues stretched for about one kilometre (a half-mile) outside the enduring Lama temple in Beijing, which had been repeatedly shut before COVID-19 restrictions led to early December, with hundreds of individuals waiting for his or her turn to hope for his or her family members.
One Beijing resident said she wished the yr of the rabbit will bring “health to everyone”.
“I feel this wave of the pandemic is gone,” said the 57-year-old, who only gave her last name, Fang. “I didn’t get the virus, but my husband and everybody in my family did. I still think it is important to guard ourselves.”
Earlier, officials reported almost 13,000 deaths related to COVID in hospitals between January 13 and 19, adding to the nearly 60,000 within the month or so before that. Chinese health experts say the wave of infections across the country has already peaked.
The death toll update, from China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, comes amid doubts over Beijing’s data transparency and stays extremely low by global standards.
Hospitals and funeral homes were overwhelmed after China abandoned the world’s strictest regime of COVID controls and mass testing on Dec. 7 in an abrupt policy U-turn, which followed historic protests against the curbs.
The death count reported by Chinese authorities excludes those that died at home, and a few doctors have said they’re discouraged from putting COVID on death certificates.
China on Jan. 14 reported nearly 60,000 COVID-related deaths in hospitals between Dec. 8 and Jan. 12, an enormous increase from the 5,000-plus deaths reported previously over your complete pandemic period.
Spending by funeral homes on items from body bags to cremation ovens has risen in lots of provinces, documents show, certainly one of several indications of COVID’s deadly impact in China.
Some health experts expect that multiple million people will die from the disease in China this yr, with British-based health data firm Airfinity forecasting COVID fatalities could hit 36,000 a day this week.
As hundreds of thousands of migrant employees return home for Lunar Recent 12 months celebrations, health experts are particularly concerned about people living in China’s vast countryside, where medical facilities are poor compared with those within the affluent coastal areas.
About 110 million railway passenger trips are estimated to have been made during Jan. 7-21, the primary 15 days of the 40-day Lunar Recent 12 months travel rush, up 28% year-on-year, People’s Each day, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, reported.
A complete of 26.23 million trips were made on the Lunar Recent 12 months eve via railway, highway, ships and airplanes, half the pre-pandemic levels, but up 50.8% from last yr, state-run CCTV reported.
The mass movement of individuals through the holiday period may spread the pandemic, boosting infections in some areas, but a second COVID wave is unlikely within the near term, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist on the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Saturday on the Weibo social media platform.
The opportunity of a giant COVID rebound in China over the following two or three months is distant as 80% of individuals have been infected, Wu said.
After China re-opened its borders on Jan. 8, some Chinese also booked trips abroad. Asia’s tourist hotspots have been bracing for the return of Chinese tourists, who spent $255 billion a yr globally before the pandemic.
“Due to pandemic, we hadn’t been out of China for 3 years,” said tourist and business owner Kiki Hu, 28, in Krabi on Thailand’s southwest coast. “Now that we are able to leave and are available here for holiday, I feel so blissful and emotional”.
(Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom; Writing by Marius ZahariaEditing by Shri Navaratnam)
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