90% of people in China province infected with Covid, says local health official

Almost 90% of people in China's Henan province have now been infected with Covid-19 as the country battles an unprecedented surge in cases, The Guardian reported citing a top official.

The province's Covid infection rate is 89% as of 6 January 2023, said Kan Quancheng, director of the health commission for central Henan province at a press conference.

The figures suggest about 88.5 million people of the third most populous province with a population of 99.4 million may now have been infected with Covid-19.

Infections are expected to surge in rural areas as hundreds of millions travel to their home towns for the Lunar New Year holidays, which officially start from 21 January, known before the pandemic as the world's largest annual migration of people.

In the first wave of pre-holiday travel, official data showed 34.7 million people travelled domestically on Saturday – up by more than a third compared with last year, according to Chinese state media.

Officially, China reported just 5,272 Covid-related deaths as of 8 January, one of the lowest rates of death from the infection in the world.

But the World Health Organization has said China is under-reporting the scale of the outbreak and international health experts estimate more than 1 million people in the country could die from the disease this year.