China braces for Covid surge as lunar new year travel rush begins

Travellers leave cities for countryside amid warnings for most vulnerable and huge increase in official coronavirus death toll

Luggage-laden passengers flocked to railway stations and airports in China's megacities on Monday, heading home for holidays that health experts fear could intensify a Covid-19 outbreak that has claimed thousands of lives.

After three years of strict and suffocating anti-virus controls, China in early December abruptly abandoned its zero-Covid policy, letting the virus run freely through its population of 1.4 billion.