COVID deaths in China halve as officials signal wave nearing end

China’s current COVID-19 surge appears to be leveling off — with no significant spike in infections during the Lunar New Year holiday and a sharp drop in the number of deaths, health officials said.

The number of severe cases and deaths is also trending down, the country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday.

“During the Lunar New Year holiday, there was no apparent recovery in Covid cases,” the CDC wrote in a report.

“No new variant has been discovered in that time, and the country’s current wave is coming to an end.”

Between January 20 and 26, when millions of families gathered for holiday reunions, China reported 6,364 COVID-related deaths.

A week earlier, the CDC reported that there had been 12,658 COVID-related deaths.

“The overall epidemic situation in the country has reached a low level, and the epidemic situation in various places has maintained a steady downward trend,” National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng said in a news conference on Monday.

This year’s Lunar New Year celebration is the first in three years without one of the country’s strict “zero-COVID” lockdown restrictions.

China ended its draconian policy in early December after widespread protests.

About 226 million domestic trips, including flights, are believed to have been made during the holiday week, state broadcaster CCTV reported, citing government figures.

Chinese officials initially tried to argue that there had been few COVID-related deaths since their policy change.

However, the National Health Commission later reported that there had been nearly 60,000 COVID-related deaths between December 8 and January 12, after the agency changed its definition of what constitutes a COVID-related death.

The sharp change in the numbers underscores the lack of transparency from Beijing on the number of daily cases the country has seen since December.

With postal wires