China’s aviation regulator said it had scheduled 2,500 extra international flights ahead of the holiday, and transportation officials said that they expected 480 million rail trips during the 40-day travel surge, a nearly 40 percent increase from last year. NYT
The Omicron variant has dampened the plans of tens of millions of people across several Asian countries to travel during the Lunar New Year, as officials battle the pandemic for a third year. Observed this year on Feb. 1, Lunar New Year falls just as many countries are seeing surges in coronavirus cases. Omicron is becoming the dominant variant in countries like South Korea, which expects up to 90 percent of its cases to be Omicron-related by the end of February. Before the pandemic, as many as three billion trips…