China claims that since the end of the disputed zero-Covid policies at the end of November 2022 till February 2023 200 million of its citizens have been diagnosed with Covid-19, writes AP. Of those, 800,000 critically ill patients have recovered, says the news agency in an article, based on notes from a meeting of the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee presided over by President and party leader Xi Jinping. The president claims Covid-19 has been effectively beaten.
The article does not mention the number of deaths caused by Covid-19, estimated by other sources at up to 1.5 million.
Flights to and from China have been slow to recover and schools have resumed last week after the winter stop.
The fallout is still expected to continue till the summer break as the damage has been huge, and – based on unconfirmed figures – decimated the foreign business community in China by about 50 percent.
