People take part in a protest at a Covid test factory in Chongqing, China
(Picture: via REUTERS)Almost 90 per cent of people in China’s third most populous province are infected with Covid, a top official has said, as workers at an antigen test factory clash with police.
The Henan province has an infection rate of 89 per cent as of January 6, director of the province’s health comission, Kan Quancheng, told a press conference.
The figures suggest about 88.5 million people in Henan may be infected.
Mr Kan said visits to fever clinics in Henan peaked on December 19 “after which it showed a continuous downward trend”.
It comes after a protest, attended by hundreds of people, turned violent outside a factory owned by manufacturer Zybio in the central municipality of Chongqing, videos posted to social media reveal.
The protest was over wages and the layoff of several workers Zybio, according to reports.
One video showed people throwing traffic cones, boxes and stools at police carrying riot shields. Another video, posted on social media platforms such as Twitter and Douyin, showed dozens of protesters chanting “return our money”.
Zybio declined to comment, according to Reuters.
Officially China reported just 5,272 Covid-related deaths as of January 8, one of the lowest rates of death from the infection in the world.
But the World Health Organization (WHO) has said China is under-reporting the scale of the outbreak and international virus experts estimate more than one million people in the country could die from the disease this year.
Chinese officials dropped pandemic border controls in the latest easing of curbs, as it moves to a “new phase” in its Covid response.
Sunday’s reopening is one of the last steps in China’s dismantling of its “zero-Covid” regime, which began last month after historic protests against curbs that kept the virus at bay for three years but caused widespread damage to the world’s second-largest economy.
While Beijing hopes to boost travel, several nations including the US are demanding negative tests from visitors from China, seeking to contain an outbreak that is overwhelming many of China’s hospitals and crematoriums.
“Life is moving forward again!,” the official newspaper of the Communist Party, the People’s Daily, wrote in an editorial praising the government’s virus policies late on Sunday which it said had moved from “preventing infection” to “preventing severe disease”.
“Today, the virus is weak, we are stronger.”
China’s state Xinhua news agency said the country had entered a “new phase” of its Covid response, citing its virus prevention experience, the development of the epidemic and increased vaccination levels.
China’s top health officials and state media have repeatedly said Covid infections are peaking across the country and they are playing down the threat now posed by the disease.
That is in stark contrast to the earlier regime of strict quarantines and lockdowns as China managed the virus as a “Category A” disease like the bubonic plague and cholera. China’s management of Covid was technically downgraded to “Category B” on Sunday, although many curbs have been dropped for weeks.
