About 900 million in China infected with Covid: Chinese university study

As many as 900 million (90 crore) Chinese people have been infected with Covid amid China's ongoing crisis to control the spread of the virus more than a month after doing away with most pandemic-related restrictions, according to a study by Peking University. This makes up for 64 per cent of the country's population.

Gansu province in northwestern China has 91 per cent of the people infected by COVID-19. Located about 1500 km southwest of the capital Beijing, the Peking University's study claimed that 239 million people have been infected by Covid in the Gansu province.

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Gansu's devastating Covid infection spread is followed by Yunnan(84 per cent) and Qinghai (80 per cent) provinces.

Reports citing Chinese epidemiologists have claimed that cases will rise in rural China over the lunar new year.

How long will China's Covid crisis last?

The crisis will last two-three months more, according to Zeng Guang, former head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control, who told BBC that the Covid wave will peak within next two to three months.

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Many elderly and specially-abled people in the rural areas of China are left behind in terms of Covid treatment, he added.

Why is there such a spread of Covid in China?

The ongoing spread of the virus is stoked by widespread travel taking place in China, ahead of the lunar new year that begins January 23.

The Lunar New Year holidays in China, which officially start from January 21, involve the world's largest annual migration of people. Some two billion trips are expected to be made in total and tens of millions of people have already travelled, BBC reported.

Since abandoning the zero Covid policy last month, China has stopped publishing daily Covid numbers.

However, visuals from cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have shown the scale of the crisis stoked by the spread of Covid in China. Hospitals have become crowded with more and more Covid patients.

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) said that China is heavily under-reporting Covid deaths.

Despite a wider spread of the virus, China has reported a little over 5,000 Covid-related deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

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