China Covid: Three winter waves says health officials

• The number of cases has gone up.
• The government said there were only 2,097 new daily cases.
• Schools in Shanghai are set to go online amid Covid cases.

A top health official in China says that he thinks the country is seeing the first of three waves of Covid infections this winter.

Since the country got rid of its strictest restrictions earlier this month, the number of cases has gone up.

Based on the most recent official numbers, it looks like there aren’t that many new cases each day.

But there are worries that these numbers are too low because the number of Covid tests has been cut recently.

On Sunday, the government said there were only 2,097 new daily cases.

Epidemiologist Wu Zunyou said he thinks the current rise in infections will last until the middle of January. The second wave will be caused by the large number of people travelling in January around the Lunar New Year celebrations, which start on January 21 and last for a week. At this time of year, millions of people travel to be with their families for the holidays.

Dr. Wu said that the third increase in cases would happen from the end of February to the middle of March, when people go back to work after the holidays.

He told a conference on Saturday that the current level of vaccinations offered some protection against the outbreaks and had caused the number of severe cases to go down.

China says that more than 90% of its people have had all of their shots. But less than half of people who are 80 or older have had all three shots. The symptoms of Covid are more likely to be bad in older people.

China has made its own vaccines, but they don’t work as well as the mRNA vaccines used in most of the rest of the world to protect people from serious Covid diseases and death.

Dr. Wu’s comments come after a reputable research institute in the US said earlier this week that it thought an increase in cases of Covid could cause more than a million deaths in China by 2023.

Since December 7, when restrictions were lifted after a lot of people protested against the government’s “zero-Covid” policy, there have been no official reports of Covid deaths. This meant that mass testing had to stop.

But there are unconfirmed reports of deaths in Beijing that may be linked to Covid.

There and in other cities, hospitals are having a hard time keeping up with a rise in patients. This has also put a strain on the postal service and food services.

As the number of cases rises, Shanghai, the largest city in China, has told most of its schools to have classes online.

Also Read

China signals eases in Covid policy after mass protests

lockdown restrictions lifted in Shanghai and Guangzhou, areas with high incidence of...