Feel-good factor or truth? Chinese state media says Covid wave past its peak

Covid In China: This comes amid international concerns over the scale and the impact of the Covid wave in China.

Many parts of China have already reached their peak of Covid infections, state media reported as Beijing continued to downplay the severity of the outbreak in the country. This comes amid international concerns over the scale and the impact of the Covid wave in China.

Covid In China: Workers wearing protective suits stand in a booths to take Covid-19 tests.(AP)

Health Times, a publication managed by People's Daily which is the Communist Party's official newspaper, said that infections have been declining in Beijing and other provinces as well. Even though China has stopped publishing data for daily infections and has been reporting five or fewer deaths a day since Beijing abandoned its strict ‘zero-Covid’ policy after almost three years. The figures have been disputed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

But a Health Times compilation of reports from local government officials and health experts across China, suggested that the Covid wave may be past its peak in many regions of the country. At Henan, the report said the infection rate was nearly 90% as of January 6 adding that the number of patients at clinics in the province reached a peak on December 19. The report also said that Beijing was past its peak and so was Chongqing which reached peak Covid cases on December 20.

In the state-run China Daily, a top health official said the percentage of severe cases remained unclear. “It is still too early to conclude the overall percentage of severe and critical Covid patients in China as different types of hospitals report different numbers”, Wang Guiqiang, head of Peking University First Hospital's infectious disease department, was quoted as saying.