90% of Populous Chinese Province Has COVID, Official Says

Roughly 89 percent of the citizens in China’s third-most populous province are infected with COVID-19, a local health official said at a press conference on Monday. The figure, shared by Kan Quancheng, director of the provincial health commission, would suggest that approximately 88.5 million people were infected in Henan province, which has a total population of 99.4 million as of Jan. 6. According to the BBC, Kan explained that visits to fever clinics surged and peaked around Dec. 19, “after which it showed a continuous downward trend.” In recent weeks, China has largely dismantled its crushingly restrictive “zero-COVID” policy, which gouged into the nation’s financial structures and prompted a rare series of protests from fed-up residents of the country’s largest cities late last year. Since scrapping the policy, medical personnel have struggled to contend with a surge in cases, reports of which stand in contrast to the data reported by the central government. The nation’s top health authority claims that since the end of “zero-COVID” only 30 people have died, with around 120,000 contracting the virus.