With scant official data from China, the WHO on Wednesday said it will be challenging to manage the virus over a holiday period considered the world's largest annual migration of people.
More than two billion passengers are expected to take trips over the broader Lunar New Year period, which started on January 7th and runs for 40 days, China’s transport ministry has said. That is double last year’s trips and 70 per cent of those seen in 2019 before the pandemic emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
Liang Wannian, the head of a Covid expert panel under the national health authority, told reporters that deaths could only be accurately counted after the pandemic was over. That has lifted Asian stocks to a seven-month peak, strengthened China’s yuan currency against the US dollar and bolstered global oil prices on hopes of fresh demand from the world’s top importer.
But concerns about China’s outbreak has prompted more than a dozen countries to demand negative Covid test results from people arriving from China.