More than 82 percent of China's population was infected with the novel coronavirus between December and February, a weekly report issued by the Chinese Center For Disease Control and Prevention estimated on Friday.

The center also found vaccine booster shots are effective in preventing the infection and alleviating symptoms of the disease within six months.

Infections sharply increased during December and January, but given many infected people might not have received nucleic acid or antigen tests, the center's data could not accurately reflect how serious the outbreak was.

Because of this, the center decided to estimate the severity of the disease via anonymous online survey, requesting information such as gender, age, address, occupation, symptoms and whether they had been vaccinated, with surveys conducted four times between December and February.

The results showed self-reported infection rates peaked between Dec 19 and 21, with 82.4 percent of the country's population infected by the virus as of Feb 7.