China is poised to withstand the hard COVID test for the Spring Festival holidays as most cities and regions have already passed their infection peaks, and adequate preparations and contingency plans put in place by authorities at all levels, the hard work of medical workers as well as enhanced vaccinations have allowed residents to enjoy a safe and warm Spring Festival without triggering a large-scale resurgence of infections so far. 

Unlike some Western media outlets that predicted China's small cities and rural areas would see tsunami-like infections following the Spring Festival travel rush, not only the country witnessed a warm and joyful Spring Festival with its airports, bus and train stations fully crowded - images that have not been seen in the past three years, it also gradually reopens to the world with a total of 2.45 million trips crossing the border during the Spring Festival travel peak. 

According to data released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) on Saturday, as of Thursday, 1.31 billion people in the Chinese mainland have been vaccinated, among them 1.28 billion have been fully vaccinated. Among those above 60 years old, 241.6 million have been vaccinated while 230 million are fully vaccinated. 

The CDC's report on Wednesday also said the number of COVID infections and visits to fever clinics across the country reached their peak with the new infections surpassing 7 million and visits to fever clinics reaching 2.87 million on a daily basis. Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of China's CDC, also said that the likelihood of a large nationwide rebound or a second wave in the next two to three months is small, as this wave of the epidemic has already infected about 80 percent of the population.

The CDC report also pointed out that based on the reported positive cases through mass testing, the number of infections reached the peak on December 22 with 6.94 million, and dropped to the lowest point of 15,000 on January 23.