China says COVID-19 situation at low level, fever visits drop 40%

BEIJING Reuters said on Monday that the country's COVID 19 situation was at a low level and that fever clinic visits due to the coronaviruses during the Lunar New Year dropped about 40% from before the week-long holiday.

The epidemic situation in the country has entered a low level, and the epidemic situation in various places has kept a downward trend, according to a National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng, who said on Monday travel domestically and in and out of China during the holiday period, as millions boarded planes, trains, buses and highways after Beijing abruptly dismantled an almost three-year zero-COVID policy in early December.

Passenger trips reached 892 million between Jan. 7 and Jan. 29, up 56% from 2022, a transport ministry official told reporters, but down 46.9% from the same period in 2019.

China's sudden relaxation of COVID restrictions was followed by a wave of infections across its 1.4 billion population. A prominent government scientist said on Jan. 21 that 80% of people had already been infected, making there a chance of a rebound in cases in the coming months.

Some experts had warned that Lunar New Year travel, known as the world's largest migration of people, would trigger a wave of infections in rural areas that are not equipped to deal with them.

The number of severe COVID cases and deaths had dropped last week and no new mutant strains had been identified, according to the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention last week.

The CDC said last week that critically ill COVID cases in China fell 72% from a peak earlier this month, while daily deaths of COVID patients in hospitals fell 79% from their peak.

Some global experts have said that China's reported data on COVID-related deaths may vastly undercount the actual total because it excludes those who die at home, while some doctors have said they were discouraged from citing COVID as a cause of death.