The number of trips made in China on the first day of the Lunar New Year travel season increased by 38.2% compared to 2022, after Beijing abolished epidemic prevention measures.
According to the official Xinhua News Agency, a total of 34.7 million trips were made last Saturday, the first day of a 40-day period when Chinese people usually return to their home countries to celebrate the Lunar New Year. , the main festival of Chinese families. .
This period, which is the one with the highest annual migration on the planet, has been affected, in the last two years, by the preventive measures against Covid-19 in force in China, under the ‘zero cases’ policy of Covid-19.
Despite the increase in the number of trips, the data is still 48.6% lower than that registered on the first day of the 2019 travel season, the last Lunar New Year before the pandemic.
In December, as part of the end of the ‘covid zero’ policy, which has been in force in the country for almost three years, the Chinese government lifted restrictions on domestic travel, which included requiring negative PCR tests to travel by plane or train. and trip registration through a location application.
Each city or province also had its own policies: Beijing, for example, did not allow the entry of travelers from areas where there had been cases of Covid-19 in the previous seven days.
In 2023, Lunar New Year falls between January 21 and 27, and the peak travel season, known in Chinese as ‘chunyun’, runs from January 7 to February 15.
Chinese health authorities have already asked rural areas, where many migrant workers in cities travel, to prepare for the spread of COVID-19. Some cities in the country have already passed the peak of outbreaks of the new coronavirus, but it has not yet spread to rural areas and small urban centers.
The State Council, the Chinese executive, urged local governments in mid-December to give priority to these areas “to protect the population”, pointing out “their relative scarcity of health resources.”
The easing of restrictions preceded an unprecedented wave of infections in the Asian country, which caused scenarios of great hospital pressure in several cities.
The rapid spread of the virus in the country cast doubt on official figures, which reported only a few recent deaths from the disease, despite localities and provinces estimating that a significant proportion of their population was infected.
Source: TSF
