12:49 PM
Sunday, January 22, 2023
Beijing – (AFP):
On Saturday, January 21, 2023, China reported that it had recorded 13,000 deaths related to Covid-19 in hospitals between January 13 and 19, while a health official said that the vast majority of the population had contracted the epidemic.
And the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement that during this period, 681 patients died in hospital after suffering from respiratory failure due to Covid and 11,977 due to other diseases related to the virus.
And these numbers do not include those who died of corona in their homes.
In mid-January, more than a month after the lifting of health restrictions, China reported that it had recorded nearly 60,000 Covid-related deaths in medical institutions in the country between December 8, 2022, and January 12, 2023, a toll that is believed to not reflect the actual higher number of deaths.
According to the British medical analytics company, Irfinity, the daily number of Covid-19 deaths in China is expected to rise to about 36,000 on the occasion of the Lunar New Year holiday. The company also estimated that more than 600,000 people have died from the disease since China lifted restrictions in December.
Tens of millions of people have traveled across the country in recent days to go home for New Year’s celebrations on Sunday, raising fears of a sharp rise in the number of infections again.
And the Chinese transport authorities expect that the number of trips until February will reach more than two billion trips.
But although these mass movements may enhance the transmission of infection, “the current wave of the epidemic has infected about 80% of the population,” said Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in a message posted on the Chinese “Weibo” network for social communication on Saturday. .
“In the short term, for example, in the next two or three months, the possibility of a second epidemic wave in the country is very small,” he added.
