The National Health Commission of China announced this Sunday (25) that it will no longer release daily data on cases and deaths from Covid, as it has done since the beginning of 2020. The announcement comes amid an unprecedented wave of contagions of the disease in the country. Asian country, consequence of the relaxation of the strict policy for the containment of the pandemic known as Covid zero.
The Commission, which has ministry status, gave no justification for the decision. Ten days earlier, however, she had declared that tracking new cases had become virtually impossible since the easing of disease control measures. This is because, by enacting the end of the mandatory PCR tests and permission for home quarantine, the Chinese began to carry out tests in their own homes, and most of them do not communicate the results to the authorities.
It added that China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will publish information about the outbreak, but did not specify which data will be released or how often. The CDC had also announced that it would not publish daily reports on the coronavirus in mid-December.
According to the AFP news agency, the population, which had been noticing the discrepancy in the official figures in relation to the number of infected people, received the announcement with sarcasm.
“Finally they woke up and realized that they cannot deceive people with underestimated numbers”, wrote a user of the social network Weibo, the Chinese Twitter. Another netizen celebrated the news by stating that the commission was “the largest office for the manufacture of false statistics in the country”.
Another controversy that put official data in check was a new methodology imposed by the regime. Only deaths resulting from pneumonia or respiratory failure caused by the new coronavirus are counted as deaths related to the disease. Since the suspension of Covid zero, the authorities have only attributed six deaths to the virus, and the WHO (World Health Organization) claims to have received no data on new hospitalizations as of that date.
Reports in state media indicate pressure on the national health system, with staff working even sick and doctors from rural communities being re-hired to help with the efforts.
Crematorium officials also reported to AFP a sharp increase in the number of corpses they are receiving. Guangzhou, a metropolis in the south with 19 million inhabitants, had announced that it would postpone its funeral ceremonies until after January 10 due to a “significant increase in demands” – the justification was later withdrawn from the statement.
Faced with the blackout of centralized data, some provinces began to release their own estimates on the size of the virus. This is the case of Zhejiang, about 200 kilometers from Shanghai, in the east of the country, which has around 65 million inhabitants.
According to local authorities, the number of daily infections in the province now exceeds one million. In addition, the number of patients visiting specialist clinics has increased 14 times since last week, and requests for admission to the emergency center in the capital, Hangzhou, have more than tripled from last year’s average.
In a statement, Zhejiang authorities warned that the situation should only get worse until the Lunar New Year, scheduled for January 22, when the number of daily infections is expected to reach two million – the most important holiday on the Chinese calendar. marks the moment when citizens return to their hometowns to celebrate.
Also the cities of Qingdao, in the east, and Dongguan, in the south, estimate tens of thousands of daily cases of Covid, much more than registered by national bodies. Meanwhile, the capital, Beijing, said on Saturday (24) that it is home to a large number of infected people and that it is doing everything possible to control the outbreak and reduce death rates.
The change in the course of the controversial Covid-zero policy, which included practices such as large-scale confinements and the systematic hospitalization of infected people and had been criticized even by international organizations, comes in the wake of an unusual series of popular mobilizations carried out in the main cities and universities. the country at the end of November.
The protests were the strongest public challenge to Xi Jinping’s leadership and came about a month after he was crowned with an unprecedented third term at the helm of the regime. They were also part of the slowdown of the Chinese economy, with the country registering the biggest drop in the flow of trade in two and a half years.
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