Pleasant festival
The whole country has been in the grip of a widespread Spring Festival vibe in late January. Residents of Guangzong county in Hebei Province flocked to outdoor markets, malls and parks that were decked with red lanterns and Spring Festival couplets to watch lion dance and acrobatic performances. The laughter of running children, sellers touting their wares and cheers from crowds for performers added more joy amid the cold winter.
A villager surnamed Liu was busy buying decorations for good luck and was happy to see the hustle and bustle in the market. "After three years, we finally got over the epidemic. My children who are working in different cities are coming home. I've come to buy decorations to make the house more festive!" Liu told the Global Times.
One nucleic acid testing site in the county in front of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, where there used to be queues that extended for several meters, was closed. Some locals who passed by said that the three-year battle against the virus felt like something that happened in the distant past, and that the past busy days have returned.
Joyful scenes appeared across China. In the southern towns of East China's Anhui Province, residents made meatballs - indicating family reunion - spring rolls and other traditional food to welcome their relatives home. At local wholesale markets, the Global Times reporter saw people busy purchasing fruits and other agricultural products before Chinese New Year's Eve, which fell on January 21.
A local restaurant employee in Ningguo county in Anhui told the Global Times that all the table's for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner in his restaurant were fully booked.
A hospital employee surnamed Zhang from Xuanzhou area in Anhui told the Global Times that this year, most of the medical staff in the hospital where he works could at least enjoy Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with their family as the COVID-19 infections started to decline about two weeks before Spring Festival. "During the Spring Festival, the epidemic [situation] is relatively stable and the hospital has prepared fully with ensuring on-duty staff for 24-hour and sufficient medicine stock," Zhang said.
The epidemic restrictions being lifted as well as the decline in infections in Chinese cities encouraged the travel boom. During the Spring Festival holiday, scenic spots welcomed hordes of tourists with a range of festive events. For instance, Xi'an of Shaanxi Province has experienced a 571 percent rise in trans-provincial visits compared to the previous year.In the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, the traditional flower fairs ahead of the Chinese New Year resumed, bringing back hundreds of stalls selling flowers, crafts and snacks, while lively performances such as lion dance were also on offer.
Not let guard down
While Chinese people have been enjoying the festival, the country has not let its guard down over the management of COVID-19.
The Global Times learned that hospitals in many places across China made emergency plans for a possible infection surge during the holiday and medical staff were required to be on standby in case of any major outbreaks.
Before and during the Spring Festival holiday, Chinese health authorities had made preparations, putting rural areas as the top priority of the anti-epidemic work and calling for careful arrangement of medical resources and services for key groups like the elderly and children.
Unlike some Western media reports that predicted China's rural areas and small cities would see mass infections following the Spring Festival holidays, the Global Times learned from different localities that the numbers of positive cases have been largely declining during the holidays while some third- and fourth-tier cities have already passed the infection peak.
A doctor surnamed Wu, owner of a clinic in Hengfeng county, East China's Jiangxi Province, told the Global Times on Wednesday that there had been no COVID-19 patients seeking treatment in her clinic during the Spring Festival holiday so far, as the infection peak in the county had passed.
Wu received nearly 30 patients during the half-month infection peak from December 19, 2022 to early January.
The majority were aged between 50 and 80, she said, noting that there were five or six COVID patients aged over 80. Some were coughing, some reporting chest pain, some with bloody sputum, vomiting or body aches, Wu said, noting that antipyretics, antivirals and intravenous drips to reduce inflammation were the common treatment in response to the symptoms. All the patients she treated have recovered and none was transferred to the county hospital.
With full preparations, most of the places have steadily gone through the infection surge, making the overall epidemic situation in China controllable, analysts said.
According to the latest report from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), overall visits to fever clinics nationwide reached a peak of 2.87 million on December 23, 2022 and dropped to 63,000 on January 23. Visits to fever clinics in rural areas peaked on December 23, 2022 at 922,000, declining 94.6 percent from their peak to 50,000 on January 23.
Small-scale infections may occur in the future but it will not be like the infection peak in December of 2022 as most of the population has been infected, Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert from Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times
Wang noted that in June, the infection will be stable as the virus is not active in the summer season. But more preparations should be made, including updating vaccines and testing strains of the virus for the winter in 2023.
While China has overcome the infection peak smoothly and enjoyed the Spring Festival holiday, the World Health Organization is mulling whether the COVID outbreak still meets the definition of a public health emergency of international concern - the agency's highest risk level. However, some Western media are hyping the epidemic situation in China, claiming that COVID is running rampant in China and the infection surge has prolonged the global pandemic.
Wang refuted that China's epidemic is not the reason for the WHO considering announcing the pandemic is over. The COVID-19 epidemic is a public health event that concerns all people as the virus has experienced mutations and has stronger infectivity in less time.When to announce the end of the pandemic depends on herd immunity, the infectivity of the virus in humans and the situation of mass vaccination, Wang said.
