The peak incidence of Covid-19 cases in China is expected to continue “until February or March”, predicted the former chief of epidemiologists at the Asian country’s Center for Disease Control, Zeng Guang, quoted this Friday by the local press.
Zeng referred to the different stages of the novel coronavirus pandemic faced by each city and province. “The peak of the epidemic has passed in places like Beijing, but it has not started yet in some regions, such as rural areas,” he noted.
The peak of the wave of Covid-19 at the “national level” should therefore last “until February and March”, citing the example of Beijing, where the “peak of cases has already ended, but the wave of serious cases continues active”. .
The former official expressed his concern about “the situation in rural China” and called for the application of a “prevention strategy”, as the authorities have indicated in recent weeks, due to the proximity of the Lunar New Year.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese return to their home countries during the holiday, the country’s main family holiday, similar to Christmas in Western countries. This year, the festive period takes place between January 21 and 27.
The State Council (Executive) asked, in the middle of last month, local governments to give priority to health services in rural areas “to protect the population”, pointing out “their relative scarcity of health resources.”
Although local experts have declared that the peak of infections has passed in large cities such as Beijing, Chengdu (center) or Guangzhou (south), other places have called for caution, due to the millions of displacements that will take place during the holiday.
The rapid spread of the virus has called into question the reliability of official figures, which reported only a few recent deaths from the disease, despite the fact that the reality on the ground suggests that the country faces a serious public health crisis.
World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week that China is not giving full numbers of deaths from Covid-19 in the current outbreak, preventing the true severity of the global pandemic from being known. . level.
Source: TSF
