Covid alert for the “Chunyun”: the largest migration in the world begins in an unrestricted China

In the middle of wave of coronavirus infections in Chinaafter the lifting of most of the restrictions with the abandonment of the “zero COVID” strategy, the world is starting to look with concern at the migration of more than 50 million travelers from Beijing within the beginning of the 40-day period known as “Chunyun”, which happens every year during the New Year’s of the Asian giant.

During the “Chunyun”, the period in which the largest annual migration in the world takes place, several countries have decided to impose new restrictions on travelers from China, a country hit by a surge in cases since it decided to relax its strict policy healthcare.

The three-day Lunar New Year holiday caused the movement of 52.7 million people in the first holiday period since the absolute control exercised by the Communist Party was eliminated, the figure for which shows a Recovery of 42.8%. compared to data from the same dates in 2019, before the start of the pandemic.

The growth in passenger volume is seen as a response to the announcement by the authorities at the beginning of last December that they began the dismantling of restrictions that had been placed to deal with the virus over the past three years.

According to estimates by the Ministry of Transport of the Asian giant, it is expected that around 2,090 million trips on Chinese soil between January 7 and February 15, a 99.5% increase over 2022.

Recovering the possibility of make the interprovincial journeys normallything for which until recently there were numerous restrictions, sand all the alarm lights went on due to the inevitable increase in coronavirus cases.

In the China’s rural areas must ensure ‘medicine supply’ during the Lunar New Year since then an increase in cases is expected of covid in extra-urban areas due to the flow of travellers, as an expert from the National Health Commission explains.

The restrictions accompanying the strict policy had been in place for almost three years and consisted of confinements in which cases were registered, border closures, isolation of all infected people and their close contacts and constant PCR tests on the population.

As restrictions were lifted and the virus spread rapidly, China began to ramp up doubts about the reliability of official data on infections and deathswhich recorded only a handful of recent deaths from the disease despite the fact that localities and provinces estimated that a significant portion of their population was infected.

The truth is that, despite the infections, the image that is repeated throughout China is that of train station platforms full of people who are still afraid but want to travel to their family homes, mostly in rural areas.