A senior Chinese health official has revealed that half a million Covid cases are being recorded daily in Tsingtao city alone, in a rare admission that official statistics do not reflect the reality of the scale of the new outbreak, as claimed in an article. which was quickly censored.
With people’s dissatisfaction growing, China abandoned the main pillars of its “zero Covid” policy to contain the epidemic earlier this month and reversed the lockdowns, tests, quarantines and travel restrictions affecting the country. economy of China.
Since then, the epidemic has spread to China and much of the population has been left to fend for itself as markets face shortages of antipyretic drugs and self-tests due to increased demand.
Cities across China are struggling to stem a spike in infections that have emptied pharmacy shelves and filled hospital rooms and cremation centers.
But the abolition of mandatory tests has made it nearly impossible to estimate the number of injured, while authorities have changed their approach to counting the deaths. The death toll now only includes people who died of respiratory failure directly related to COVID-19.
Experts believe that this step aims to reduce the number of deaths caused by the Corona virus.
And in Qingdao in the east, a media run by the ruling Communist Party quoted the municipal health director on Friday as saying the city in the east is seeing “between 490,000 and 530,000” new cases of Covid a day .
“rapid infection”
Bo Tao, whose comments were published in the article, said the coastal city of about 10 million people is experiencing a “rapid phase of infection before it approaches its peak.” The same official added that the infection rate is expected to rise another 10% over the weekend.
Several other media outlets carried the story, which was edited Saturday morning to remove the numbers from it.
On Saturday, China’s Health Ministry announced that 4,103 new infections were recorded across the country on Friday, but there were no deaths.
In Shandong, the province where Qingdao is located, the authorities have officially reported only 31 new local infections.
The Chinese government strictly controls the media, with heavy internet censorship to remove any politically sensitive content.
Most state media downplayed the severity of the new Covid wave. Instead, he described the change in COVID-19 policy as logical and deliberate.
Media reports have reported medicine shortages and pressure on hospitals, but estimates of the actual number of injured remain slim.
And the government of Jiangxi (east) province predicted, in a social media post on Friday, that 80 percent of its population – about 36 million people – would be infected with the virus through March.
He added that more than 18,000 COVID-19 patients had been admitted to major hospitals in the province in the two weeks to Thursday, including about 500 serious cases but no deaths.
“Without precedents”
It appears, according to indications, that infrastructure is still under pressure as the weekend approaches, while some health officials in the regions have warned that the worst is yet to come.
And authorities in Dongguan in the south of the country said on Friday that expectations were that the number of new infections could reach 300,000 a day, explaining that the pace of the virus’s spread was accelerating.
“A number of infrastructure and medical personnel are facing great difficulties and unprecedented pressure,” the health bureau of this city of 10.5 million people said in a statement.
The office has released video recordings showing patients lined up with intravenous serums standing in line outside a clinic or a doctor sleeping at his desk after working several days in a row.
A health official in Hainan said on Friday that the number of infections will peak “very soon”.
In the big city of Shanghai in eastern China, more than 40,000 patients have been treated for “feverish cases,” according to the state-run People’s Daily.
And the authorities in Chongqing, the largest city in the center of the country that is seeing an explosion in the number of injured, have mounted a campaign to administer vaccines by inhalation.
In this city of 32 million inhabitants, AFP reporters saw hospitals crowded with patients, most of them elderly and infected with Covid, and dozens of corpses dumped in cremation centres.
