Chinese cities predict COVID-19 peak in January

A new COVID wave is spreading in China, with cities and provinces reporting hundreds of thousands of new COVID cases every day. Such figures exceed the official national tally. Outbreaks are predicted to peak in January 2023.

On Sunday, China's National Health Commission said it would stop publishing daily COVID-19 surveillance data. These figures, according to experts, do not take into account the fact that there was an "explosive" spread of coronavirus after Beijing eased its Covid Zero policy in early December.

The true scale of the COVID-19 outbreaks in a country of 1.4 billion people is unknown. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the damage that a new COVID wave will cause to the Chinese economy. COVID-19 case explosion will affect the entire country, but it will take an especially hard toll on major urban centers in the south. Hospitals in China are expected to be overcrowded again.