Chinese health officials warn against CNY travel amid COVID: Don’t go home

Before the 2023 Chinese New Year holiday, which starts on January 21 and ends on January 27, Chinese health officials are asking people to stay and protect elderly family members rather than travel and risk exacerbating China’s ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.

It’s a painful decision for hundreds of millions of migrant workers and students, who may be hoping to be reunited with family during the Chinese New Year (also known as the Lunar New Year or Spring Festival), the first in mainland China without any COVID restrictions since the pandemic began.

Elderly people in rural communities”can be infected at the Spring Festival when they meet relatives and friends,” Liang Wannian, who heads the country’s COVID-19 response team, told state broadcaster CCTV on Monday.

Guo Jianwen, a member of China’s pandemic prevention team, proposed on Thursday that if the Chinese are worried about the infection of their elderly relatives, “don’t go home to visit them.” He said, “You have all the ways to show that you care for them, you don’t have to bring the virus into their home.”

The question of whether to go home for Chinese New Year is a popular topic on Chinese social media, with Reuters the reporting question is the most read item in the Weiboa Twitter-like social media platform, on Thursday.

A popular response on social media called Guo’s stay-at-home suggestion “one of the few useful suggestions given at this time,” according to The Guardian. The post reflects the public’s frustration with speed change of medical advice Provided by Chinese health experts.

What happens during Chinese New Year?

Much of China’s urban labor force is made up of migrants from China’s rural heartland, and many return home to see family for the Chinese New Year holiday. Students attending the country’s universities also return home for the holidays.

China expects to end 2 billion trips during “Chunyan”, a 40-day holiday trip. The season started on January 7 and will last until February 15.

Chinese New Year used to be the biggest people’s movement in the world, with 3 billion trips made by passengers traveling back and forth in 2019, before the pandemic. (In comparison, the American Automobile Association estimated that more than 55 million Americans traveled during the Thanksgiving holiday in 2019.)

Even during the pandemic, restrictions on internal movement have made it difficult for some people to make Chinese New Year trips. the thinking of trips fear that snap lockdowns will prevent them from returning to their workplace or school, and so they choose to stay.

How many cases of COVID are there in China?

Yet it may be too late for the advice of health officials to prevent further COVID infections. The COVID outbreak in China is here spread to rural communitieseven as an outbreak be peaking in big cities.

China is experiencing a surge in cases that surpasses anything the country has seen so far. China’s official case and death figures—503,302 and 5,272, respectively—under-represents the scope of the outbreak since Beijing changed how it records COVID cases and deaths last month. Health officials, at times, suggest that the number of daily cases reaches tens of millions. Earlier this week, an official in Henan estimated that 90% of local residents have now contracted COVID, which would put the number of cases in the province close to 90 million.

Airfinity, a UK-based health research company, predictions that more than 3.5 million people get COVID every day, and more than 20,700 people die from the disease every day. The company plans that the outbreak will peak on January 13.

China’s health care system is already stretched by the epidemic, with little hospital and medicine space. There are fewer resources in rural China, with rural communities having less than half as many doctors and nurses as cities, according to South China Morning Post. Villages are also short of fever and cough medicine, forcing communities to appeal for donations via the internet, according to SCMP.

Beijing on Sunday ordered villages to stockpile at least two weeks’ worth of medicine, and set up teams of volunteer drivers to take people to treatment centers, according to the state-run paper. Global Times.

To make matters worse, China has a relatively low vaccination rate among its elderly population. In early December, health officials estimated that only 40% of the country’s over 80 population has gotten the booster shot needed to protect against newer variants of COVID. Health experts outside argue that China too must be imported more effective mRNA vaccines than relying on less effective homegrown versions.

The World Health Organization says it is ready to work with China to manage the wave of people traveling home for the holidays, but officials say they need more data. “There are some important information gaps that we are working with China to fill,” Maria Van Kerkove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID, said the reporters on Wednesday. WHO accuses China reduces the extent of its outbreak, particularly in terms of hospitalization and mortality.

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