China's soaring Covid cases push economic activity off a cliff

China’s soaring Covid infections are keeping people home and causing a slump in travel and economic activity, according to the latest high-frequency data.

Following the recent abrupt end to Covid Zero controls, more cities have been hit by an exit wave of infections in the past week, leading to crowded hospitals and queues at funeral parlours. That’s keeping people in Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere from going out despite workers in some places being told to return to work even if sick.

Several measures of mobility including traffic congestion in major cities, subway usage and the number of domestic flights have all slumped. In recent days subway passenger numbers have plummeted in cities including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xi’an and Nanjing as infections surged, while in Beijing, one of the cities that experienced the infection wave the earliest, subway usage steadied and picked up slightly over the past four days, although it is still around 80