The famous scientist said the rush to travel for the Lunar New Year is unlikely to lead to an increase in COVID cases because most people are already infected.
A prominent government scientist said the possibility of a large-scale outbreak of COVID-19 again in China in the next few months is very remote as 80% of the country’s population has been infected.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Saturday that mass movement of the people in the meantime Lunar New Year The holiday season could cause the pandemic to spread, increasing infections in some areas, but a second wave of COVID is unlikely in the next two to three months.
This is because the ongoing wave of the epidemic – mainly caused by many sub-branches of the Omicron strain – “has infected 80% of the population,” he was quoted as saying on the social media platform Weibo.
Wu’s statement comes as hundreds of millions of Chinese traveling around the country for holiday reunions have been suspended under recently eased COVID-19 containment measures.
With some 5 billion passenger trips expected, concerns about new outbreaks in rural areas less equipped to manage large numbers of infections have grown.
But the government has moved to assuage concerns, with the National Health Commission on Thursday saying China has passed the peak of COVID-19 patients in fever clinics, emergency rooms and in critical condition.
Nearly 60,000 people with COVID-19 have had died in hospital as of January 12, according to government data, about a month after China abruptly lifted its no-COVID policy.
But some experts say that number may not take into account the full impact, because it does not include people who die at home and because many doctors say they discourage citing COVID-19 as the cause of death. death.
