CNN
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China’s top health authority has announced that it has stopped publishing daily number of covid-19 casesbecause the reports claimed that the real tool of the ongoing epidemic in the country is much worse than the official figures published by the authorities.
The National Health Commission (NHC) said on Sunday that “relevant information about the outbreak” would instead be released by the China CDC, a sub-department run by the NHC. The decision to delegate his account file to a lower authority comes as China experiences an unprecedented wave of coronavirus following a drastic easing of restrictions.
The statement did not specify how often the Chinese CDC would release its Covid reports. Traditionally, the Chinese CDC only publishes monthly summaries for all infectious diseases regulated by Chinese law, ranging from seasonal flu to hepatitis B and plague.
From China has significantly eased its Covid restrictions Earlier this month, there was no clear data on the extent of the virus’s spread nationwide.
China is no longer officially tallying its total number of infections, after authorities shut down their nationwide network of PCR testing booths and said they would stop collecting data on asymptomatic cases. The Chinese now use rapid antigen tests to detect infections and are not required to report positive results.
Health officials in China’s Zhejiang province, just south of Shanghai, said on Sunday they were seeing more than a million new cases of Covid-19 a day. The province has a population of 64 million according to the latest census data released in 2021. According to CNN’s calculations, this would point to about 1,563 daily new infections per 100,000 population.
Zhejiang health commission deputy chief Yu Xinle said the province’s current surge is expected to peak around New Year’s Day – with the number of daily infections reaching 2 million. which would represent more than 3,000 daily new cases per 100,000 people – and would last for a week before declining.
The city of 9 million people of Qingdao in northern Shandong province is also registering around half a million new infections every day, the city’s health chief Bo Tao told reporters on Friday. adding that the peak was yet to come. According to CNN calculations, this represents 5,556 infections per 100,000 population.
In the southern manufacturing hub of Dongguan, a city of more than 10 million people, health officials said on Friday they were seeing between 250,000 and 350,000 new cases a day.
“The peak of Covid infection is approaching…the number of infections is increasing at an accelerated rate in Dongguan, our health system and health workers are facing an unprecedented challenge and immense pressure,” the official said. city health authority in a statement.
For nearly three years, the Chinese government has used strict lockdowns, centralized quarantines, mass testing and rigorous contact tracing to curb the spread of the virus. The costly strategy was scrapped earlier in December, following an explosion of protests across the country against tough restrictions that have upended businesses and daily life.
But experts have warned the country is ill-prepared for such a drastic exit, having failed to boost vaccination rates for the elderly, increase surge and intensive care capacity in hospitals and stockpile medicines. antivirals.
A study conducted earlier in December found that China’s abrupt and underprepared exit from zero-Covid could lead to almost a million dead.
Nearly 250 million people in China may have caught Covid-19 In the first 20 days of December, according to an internal estimate of the country’s top health officials, Bloomberg News and the Financial Times reported on Friday.
If correct, the estimate – which CNN cannot independently confirm – would represent around 18% of China’s 1.4 billion people and represent the largest Covid-19 outbreak to date in the world. .
The cited figures were presented at an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission (NHC) on Wednesday, according to the two outlets – which cited sources familiar with the matter or involved in the discussions. The NHC’s summary of Wednesday’s meeting said it looked at treating patients affected by the new outbreak.
The figures contrast sharply with public data from the NHC, which reported only 62,592 symptomatic cases in the first 20 days of December. CNN has contacted the NHC for comment.
In the face of growing skepticism that it is downplaying Covid deaths, the Chinese government recently defended the accuracy of its official count by revealing that it had updated its method of counting deaths caused by the virus.
According to the latest guidelines from the National Health Commission, only those whose deaths are caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after contracting the virus are classified as Covid deaths, said Wang Guiqiang, an infectious disease doctor on Tuesday. , during a press conference.
People presumed to have died from another illness or underlying condition, such as a heart attack, will not be counted as a virus death, even if they had Covid at the time, a he declared.
Officially, China had reported just eight Covid deaths this month as of December 22 – a surprisingly low figure given the virus’s rapid spread and relatively low booster rates among vulnerable older people.
The official tally has been met with disbelief and ridicule online, where posts mourning loved ones dying from Covid abound. Caixin, a Chinese financial magazine known for its investigative reporting, reported on the deaths of two veteran state media journalists infected with Covid, on days when the official toll was zero.
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