After President Xi Jinping stated that he was concerned about an influx of vacationers traveling to rural areas that are ill-equipped to deal with sudden outbreaks, Chinese drugmakers have rushed to produce anti-fever medications as well as other treatments for Covid-19.
Thursday’s remarks by Xi come just over a month after his government abruptly ended his strict “zero-Covid” controls, which had largely protected China’s 1.4 billion people from the disease for three years but sparked widespread protests at the end of November.
According to the most recent forecasts from the UK-based health data firm Airfinity, as many as 36,000 people could die from the disease each day as travel increases during the busy Lunar New Year holiday season.
In a holiday greetings message that was broadcast on Wednesday by state broadcaster CCTV, Xi stated, “China’s Covid prevention and control is still in a time of stress, but the light is ahead, persistence is victory.”
“The farmers and rural areas are the most concerning to me. “Prevention is difficult and the task is difficult in rural areas because medical facilities are relatively weak,” Xi stated, adding that the elderly were the top priority.
Between December 8 and January 12, nearly 60,000 people with Covid died in hospitals, a tenfold increase from previous reports, China announced last Saturday.
However, those who pass away at home are not included in that number, and some Chinese doctors have stated that they are reluctant to include Covid on death certificates. According to health professionals, China’s official statistics probably do not reflect the true number of people who died from the virus.
Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at Hong Kong University, stated, “Based on the reports of hospitals being overwhelmed and long queues outside funeral homes, we might estimate that a larger number of Covid deaths have occurred so far, maybe more than 600,000 rather than just 60,000.”
