Nearly 90% of Chinese province’s population has Covid, official says

UK-based health data firm says China will hit peak of 3.7 million daily Covid cases by 13 January

Nearly 90 per cent of the population in China’s Henan, the third most populous province in the country, is now infected with Covid-19, a top official said amid state media claims that the virus has weakened in the new phase of the outbreak.

Henan’s Covid infection rate touched 89 per cent as of 6 January, said Kan Quancheng, director of the health commission for the central region of the province, on Monday.

“With a population of 99.4 million, the figures suggest about 88.5 million people in Henan may now have been infected,” the top official said, adding that the fever clinic recorded peak footfall on 19 December.