Scientists say infection wave has likely crested in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Guangzhou, but cases in inner provinces expected to spike around mid-January as migrants travel home for Lunar New Year.
« : »The winter Covid-19 wave might have passed in major Chinese cities, but the country will see several more waves, including in rural areas, and a surge again at the end of the year, according to researchers in Shanghai. Researchers from Ruijin Hospital and Shanghai Jiao Tong University used a mathematical model based on infections from early October 2022 through November 29 to predict Covid-19 trends across the country. According to their projections, infections in the urban areas of Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing likely peaked at the end of 2022, while peak infections in Guangzhou had already passed as of late November. China can expect repeat Covid infections with new strains on the way: experts Cases in Beijing and Guangzhou were dominated by BF.7 and BA.5.2 respectively, while Shanghai had a more diverse mix of variants with more cases caused by the BQ.1 and XBB sublineages from inbound travellers. The research was led by Chen Saijuan, a molecular biologist with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The team’s findings were published last week in Frontiers of Medicine, a medical journal sponsored by China’s Ministry of Education. Wu Zunyou, an epidemiologist with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said last week that Covid-19 cases in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei province, Chengdu and Chongqing were estimated to have passed their peak.
