Prognosis
Covid Rips Through Rural China Ahead of Lunar New Year Migration
- Local villages overwhelmed as drugs and facilities are lacking
- Experts fear a growing crisis as infections peak in January
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Villagers from Luyi County in China’s heartland normally would have started preparing for the Lunar New Year celebration weeks ago.
Residents in hundreds of villages that make up the county of 1 million people in Henan province would be extracting oil from home-grown peanuts, a key local crop, and butchering pigs, geese and chickens in anticipation of the annual holiday. Spring festival couplets, the red scrolls proclaiming good wishes for the coming year, would decorate their doors for the event starting Jan. 22.