China reports approximately 13,000 COVID-19 deaths.

After a top health official stated that the vast majority of the populace has already been infected by the virus, China reported about 13,000 hospital fatalities linked to COVID between January 13 and January 19 across the country.

Since Beijing abruptly removed anti-virus regulations last month, there has been significant skepticism over official data. A week earlier, China claimed that approximately 60,000 people had died in hospitals from Covid as of January 12.

According to a statement released on Saturday by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, over the course of the period, 11,977 deaths from other diseases and infections were reported in addition to 681 hospitalized patients passing away from respiratory failure brought on by coronavirus infection.

The statistics do not reflect people who passed away at home due to the infection.

Over the Lunar New Year break, according to Airfinity, the number of Covid deaths per day in China would peak at over 36,000.

The company also calculated that since China abandoned the zero-Covid policy in December, more over 600,000 individuals have passed away from the disease.

Tens of millions of people have recently traveled across the nation in anticipation of long-awaited family reunions to commemorate the greatest festival in the lunar calendar, which happened on Sunday. This has caused concerns about new outbreaks.

Although millions of people will return to their villages to celebrate the Lunar New Year, a top health official predicted that China won’t see a second wave of COVID infections in the next two to three months because about 80% of the population has already contracted the virus.

“Although a large number of people travelling during the Spring Festival may promote the spread of the epidemic to a certain extent… the current wave of the epidemic has already infected about 80 per cent of the people in the country,” Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a post on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform on Saturday.

“In the short term, for example, in the next two to three months, the possibility of… a second wave of the epidemic across the country is very small.”

One of the largest global mass migrations of people is expected to occur this month and into February, according to China’s transport officials, which anticipate that over two billion trips would be made.