China to stop publishing daily Covid count as leaked document suggests 250 million fresh cases in just 20 days
China is finding it extremely difficult to contain the massive surge in Covid-19 cases amid packed ICUs and crowded crematoriums.
The country has now decided to stop publishing daily Covid-19 figures without specifying the reasons for the change.
China’s National Health Commission said that it will no longer release such data from Sunday, reported Reuters. The government’s action comes at a time after a leaked document suggested that about 250 million people in China may have been affected by Covid-19 in just 20 days after the ‘zero-covid policy’ was diluted in the first week of the month.
Here are the top developments in China Covid story
Announcing that China’s NHC will no longer release daily Covid data from Sunday, it said, “Relevant Covid information will be published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention for reference and research.” It did not specify the reasons for the change or how frequently China CDC will update Covid information.
According to Radio Free Asia, leaked government documents are making rounds on social media which hints that around 250 million people may have been affected due to the infection in just 20 days in first week of the month after the stringent ‘zero-Covid policy’ measures were lifted after massive protests.
The leaked document suggests that 248 million people were infected with Covid-19 from December 1 to 20, or 17.65 per cent of China’s population. A senior journalist told Radio Free Asia that the document was genuine, and had been leaked by someone who attended the meeting who was acting deliberately and in the public interests.
Hospitals and morgues in China are fully packed as Covid cases are sweeping across the country with experts forecasting million to 2 million Covid deaths next year. The current Covid surge is driven by the highly infectious BF.7 variant, which poses a high risk to the nation. Reports suggest that it could take couple of months before the country can emerge from the tsunami of infections sweeping across big cities.
China was quick to censor official’s remark after he highlighted the Covid horror in the country. A municipal health chief told a news outlet, operated by the ruling Communist Party, that Qingdao was witnessing ‘between 490,000 and 530,000’ fresh Covid cases in a day. The report was shared by several other news outlets but appeared to have been edited by Saturday morning to remove the case figures, reported AFP.
As China grapples with its first-ever national Covid-19 wave, infections have already begun to spread in villages. Multiple reports suggest that many village clinics already overwhelmed with patients suffering from fever and reporting to clinics with Covid symptoms. Emergency wards in small cities and towns southwest of Beijing are overwhelmed. Intensive care units are turning away ambulances, relatives of sick people are searching for open beds, and patients are slumped on benches in hospital corridors and lying on floors for a lack of beds, reported AP.