Multiple Chinese regions release COVID-19 infection rate

Provinces such as Hainan, Zhejiang and Sichuan recently released COVID-19 infection data via surveys, CCTV.com reported on Sunday.

The infection rate of COVID-19 in Hainan province recently is estimated at 50 percent as the daily number of new COVID-19 infections was recorded at a high level, according to the news conference on COVID-19 prevention and control in Hainan province on Friday.

Hainan Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday evening that as of 12:00am on Dec 27, they had received 33,682 online questionnaires for the second round survey of the COVID-19 infection situation.

According to the center, among those surveyed, 35.5 percent were infected between Dec 19 and 25, up 5.3 times from 5.6 percent in the previous round of survey (Dec 12- 18).

Haikou, the capital of Hainan and Sanya, a city at southern part of the province, as a whole have passed the infection peak.

Cities in Zhejiang province also released their COVID infection rates. The current overall infection rate of Quzhou city accounts for about 30-35 percent of the total population, and the infection may peak at the end of Dec 2022, according to the news conference on the prevention and control of COVID-19 infection in Quzhou from the afternoon of Dec 28. Zhoushan city estimated that the proportion of infected people in the city reached 30-40 percent, and the total number of infected people has been close to 400,000. It is estimated that the epidemic may enter a plateau stage at the end of December, and the peak will last for about a week.

On Dec 26, Sichuan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention released the second round of surveys, showing that the infection rate of 158,506 respondents in the province was 63.52 percent. In addition, 28 percent of the surveyed people had a fever, cough and other symptoms similar to novel coronavirus infection though no nucleic acid or antigen was detected. Therefore, the actual infection rate of the surveyed population should be higher than 63.52 percent. The peak of positive detection in the whole province was concentrated from December 12 to 23, and the new daily infections are presently in a declining stage.

Wu Zunyou, chief expert on epidemiology at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a briefing held by the State Council Information Office on Dec 29, "The epidemic has developed relatively early in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Chengdu-Chongqing region and some provinces in Central China, and their potential peak of the epidemic has passed. But Chongqing, Anhui, Shanghai, Hubei, Hunan and other provinces and cities are at a high epidemic stage. The epidemic is also developing rapidly in Henan, Jilin and Fujian provinces."

Chen Saijuan's team and Fan Xiaohong's team from the Shanghai Clinical Center of Public Health jointly published a research paper in Frontiers of Medicine recently. According to the preliminary judgment of the researchers, the number of people infected in this round of Omicron epidemic will come to an end around New Year's Day in 2023 in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chongqing and other cities.

Researchers deemed the peak of the epidemic will be delayed in the suburbs, and the infection will be significantly increased during the Spring Festival travel rush due to the accelerated spread of the epidemic. For Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, it is estimated that the peak of infection in rural and small and medium-sized urban areas will occur in mid to late January 2023.