China’s major cities are starting to look past Covid, while the countryside prepares for infections
According to Wind data, subway passenger traffic in Shanghai is rapidly returning to pre-Covid levels. Pictured is a subway car in the city on January 4, 2023.
Hugo Hu | Getty Images News | beautiful pictures
BEIJING — China will likely live with Covid-19 by the end of March, based on how quickly people get back on the streets, said Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie. .
He pointed out that metro and road data shows traffic in major cities is recovering, suggesting that the worst of the latest Covid wave has passed.
“The dramatic shift in China’s Covid policy since mid-November suggests that the economy will experience a deeper short-term contraction but reopening and recovery,” Hu said in a report on Wednesday. recover faster”. “The economy could rebound strongly in the spring.”
For the past several days, the southern city of Guangzhou and the tourist destination Sanya have said they have passed the peak of the Covid wave.
The Chongqing municipal health authority said on Tuesday that the daily number of visitors to major fever clinics was just over 3,000 – a sharp drop from December 16 when the number of patients admitted topped 30,000. The province-level region has a population of about 32 million people.
Chongqing was the most congested city in mainland China during Thursday morning rush hour, according to traffic data by Baidu. The figures show an increase in traffic from a week ago across Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other major cities.
Since Wednesday, subway ridership in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou has risen significantly from the lows of the past few weeks – but has only recovered to about two-thirds of last year’s levels, according to Wind. Information.
Caixin’s monthly survey of service businesses in December found them the most optimistic in about a year and a half, according to a release on Thursday. The seasonally adjusted business activity index rose to 48 in December, up from a six-month low of 46.7 in November.
That reading below 50 still indicates shrinking business activity. The index for a separate Caixin survey of manufacturers fell to 49 in December, from 49.4 in November. Their optimism was the highest in ten months.
Poorer, the next countryside
Shanghai medical researchers predict in a study that the latest Covid wave will pass through China’s major cities by the end of 2022, while rural areas – and more remote provinces in the region central and western China – will be infected in mid to late January. .
“The duration and extent of the upcoming outbreak could be significantly increased,” the researchers said in a paper published in late December by Frontiers of Medicine, a journal funded by the Chinese Ministry of Health. due to extended travel during the Lunar New Year (January 21, 2023)”. Education.
Typically, hundreds of millions of people travel during the holiday, also known as the Lunar New Year.
Elderly people, especially those with underlying health conditions, in remote areas of China face a higher risk of serious illness due to the omicron variant, researchers say high transmissibility. The authors are particularly concerned about the lack of medicines and intensive care units in rural areas.
Even before the pandemic, China’s public health system was already under strain. People from across the country often go to crowded hospitals in the capital Beijing for better health care than at home.
Oxford Economics senior economist Louise Loo remains cautious about China’s rapid recovery.
“The normalization of economic activity will take some time, which, among other things, requires a shift in public perception towards contracting Covid,” Loo said in a report on Wednesday. and vaccine efficacy.
The company expects China’s GDP to grow 4.2% in 2023.
Potential long-term risks
Health researchers also warn that the risk of omicron outbreaks in the mainland “could emerge in waves,” with new infections likely to increase by the end of 2023. how often the variants and sublines of SARS-CoV-2 circulating throughout China will not be overestimated in the months and years to come.”
However, amid a lack of timely information, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that asked China to provide “faster, more frequent, more reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths, as well as more comprehensive, real-time virus sequencing.”
China in early December abruptly ended many of the strict control measures for Covid that had restricted business and social activities. On Sunday, the country will officially end the quarantine requirement for domestic travelers, while restoring the ability for Chinese citizens to travel abroad for pleasure. The country has imposed strict border controls starting in March 2020 in an attempt to contain Covid within the country.
