Xi Jinping says China's Covid-19 fight in new stage, faces tough tasks

Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for greater efforts to fight Covid in a pre-holiday video call with people in rural areas, breaking with precedent by holding the event virtually instead of making an in-person visit. 

Xi said the current outbreak has been “fierce” and China still faced tough tasks, state broadcaster China Central Television reported late Wednesday. The country’s Covid fight required perseverance as “dawn is just ahead,” he said.

The president said he was especially worried about epidemic control in rural areas. Xi called on local authorities in the countryside to improve medical care and protect people’s health to the greatest extent possible. 

The video call was unusual because Xi has made in-person visits to rural areas before the Lunar New Year holiday every year since taking power in 2012. Xi acknowledged he was breaking with that tradition, saying: “This year, I’m doing this via video link so that I can see more places, in the east, south, west, north and in central” China.

“Even though we’re separated by a screen, I can still feel a taste of New Year around the country,” he added.

The call was joined by hundreds of people from several walks of life, such as elderly in nursing homes and workers in the natural gas industry in Xinjiang.

China reported nearly 60,000 Covid-related deaths for the first five weeks of its current outbreak, a toll that experts say is likely an underestimation. Millions of workers will travel from urban areas to their hometowns in the upcoming weeklong Lunar New Year holidays. 

The country’s top economic official Liu He told Davos this week that the peak of infections had passed, just weeks after China abandoned all of its Covid curbs. Some foreign institutions hold opposite views, with predictive health analytics company Airfinity Ltd. calling “one longer, more severe Covid wave” ahead. 

The elderly are the current focus of China’s Covid fight, Xi said. Older people are more prone to respiratory diseases and aggravation of cardiovascular diseases in the winter, an official with the country’s National Health Commission said last week. Xi said nursing homes should work with medical institutions to push for more vaccination and improve treatment capacity.