China dropped stringent 'zero-COVID' measures on Dec. 7 to adopt a strategy of living with the virus. A wave of infections has since erupted nationwide, after borders had been kept all but shut for three years.
A child walks while people wait with their luggages at a railway station, amid the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China January 1, 2023. REUTERS/Tingshu WangBEIJING, Jan 2 - Some people in China's key cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan braved the cold and a spike in COVID-19 infections to return to regular activity on Monday, confident of a boost to the economy as more recover from infections.
"After the end of this lockdown, we don’t have to scan the health code any more, nor do we have to check the travel code," said one of those in the park, Yang, who gave only one name.Also at the lake was Zhong, a 22-year-old college student, who said he had stayed home for two or three weeks after getting infected.
In the central city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began three years ago, people were not as anxious any more, a man surnamed Wu told Reuters. Some hotels in the southern tourist resort of Sanya are fully booked for Lunar New Year, media have said. But infections will peak in the urban regions of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai in the latter half of January, they added.
The official death toll of 5,250 since the pandemic began compares with more than 1 million in the United States. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million, has reported more than 11,000 deaths.in China are probably dying each day from COVID, health data firm Airfinity said last week, while cumulative deaths since Dec. 1 have probably reached 100,000, with infections at 18.6 million.
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