A top Chinese epidemiologist has also warned that cases will surge in rural China over the lunar new year

The peak of China’s Covid wave is expected to last two to three months, added Zeng Guang, ex-head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control

Some 900 million people in China have been infected with coronavirus as of January 11, according to a study by Peking University, media reports said.

The report estimates that 64 per cent of the country’s population has the virus, BBC said.

Meanwhile, China on Saturday reported 59,938 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals across the country over the last 30 days, amid criticism from the WHO that Beijing was heavily under-reporting the magnitude of the pandemic.

The death toll included 59,938 COVID-19 related deaths at hospitals from December 8 to January 12, the National Health Commission said on Saturday, official media here reported.

Jiao Yahui, director of the National Health Commission’s medical affairs department, said medical institutes recorded 5,503 deaths as a result of respiratory failure triggered by COVID-19 infections and 54,435 fatalities with underlying conditions, such as cancer or cardiovascular diseases, combined with COVID-19.

The average age of those who died was 80.3, and 90 per cent of the fatalities were aged 65 or over, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

With this, China’s official death toll climbed to 65,210 since the corona.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday that China is ”heavily underreporting” the number of COVID-19 deaths from the current wave of infections sweeping the country.

”WHO still believes that deaths are heavily underreported from China. This is in relation to the definitions that are used but also to the need for doctors and those reporting in the public health system to be encouraged to report these cases and not discouraged,” Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO Health Emergencies Programme said in Geneva.

The new death toll figures come as videos and reports in the social media showed that hospitals, morgues and crematoriums were being overwhelmed with bodies.

Families where deaths have taken place told the media that they were simply asked to leave the bodies at the morgues without mentioning dates for cremation and they would be handed over the ashes after cremation.

It ranks Gansu province, where 91 per cent of the people are reported to be infected, at the top, followed by Yunnan (84 per cent) and and Qinghai (80 per cent).

A top Chinese epidemiologist has also warned that cases will surge in rural China over the lunar new year.

The peak of China’s Covid wave is expected to last two to three months, added Zeng Guang, ex-head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese are travelling to their hometowns – many for the first time since the pandemic began – ahead of the lunar new year on January 23.

China has stopped providing daily Covid statistics since abandoning zero Covid.

But hospitals in big cities – where healthcare facilities are better and more easily accessible – have become crowded with Covid patients as the virus has spread through the country, BBC reported.

At an event earlier this month, Zeng said it was “time to focus on the rural areas”, in remarks reported in the Caixin news outlet.

Many elderly, sick and disabled in the countryside were already being left behind in terms of Covid treatment, he added.

China’s central Henan province is the only province to have given details of infection rates – earlier this month a health official there said nearly 90 per cent of the population had had Covid, with similar rates seen in urban and rural areas.

Nearly all of Beijing’s 22 million population will have been infected with the coronavirus by the end of this month, a new study found, reflecting the rapid spread of China’s outbreak.

About 92% of the people in China’s capital will have contracted Covid by the end of January, while 76% had already been infected by Dec. 22, according to the study, which was published on Friday in the journal Nature Medicine.

However government officials say many provinces and cities have passed the peak of infections.

The Lunar New Year holidays in China, which officially start from January 21, involves the world’s largest annual migration of people, BBC reported.

Some two billion trips are expected to be made in total and tens of millions of people have already travelled.