Prognosis
Covid Catastrophe Looms for China’s New Year Travelers
- Sparse health care, elderly residents put rural China at risk
- World’s largest outbreak to spread across China during holiday
This article is for subscribers only.
The sudden dismantling of China’s Covid Zero restrictions in December means hundreds of millions of people are headed home for the Lunar New Year holiday for the first time since 2019. The crush of travel risks supercharging the world’s biggest Covid outbreak, spreading it to every corner of the country.
Travelers, from migrant workers to college students to educated urban elites, risk carrying the highly-infectious omicron strain with them to Covid-naive swathes of rural China that have managed to evade the pandemic - until now.