250 million people in China were infected with Covid-19 in the first 20 days of December 2022, according to US media reports. financial time and Bloomberg. This represents about 18% of the Chinese population.
These estimates come from statements by the deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, made this Wednesday during a meeting on health issues in the country. The two outlets write that they have been informed of these data by people involved in the health discussions.
However, these figures have not been made public by the Chinese authorities.
37 million contaminations on Tuesday
According to those insiders, the official also said that 37 million people, or 2.6% of China’s population, had been infected on Tuesday alone. The official also estimated that more than half the population of the capital Beijing and the Sichuan region (central) had already been infected, and that the virus was continuing to spread.
In recent days, a municipal official has reported for his part that only in the Chinese city of Qingdao (east of the country) half a million people are infected with coronavirus every day. These announcements were published in a quickly censored article, while official statistics do not reflect the unprecedented wave of contamination in the country, reports AFP.
Parallel to this information, the Chinese health authorities give quite low figures on the number of contaminations registered. China’s Ministry of Health reported on Saturday 4,103 new infections nationwide the day before, without new deaths.
Several alerts point out, however, that the contaminations are much greater: medicines against fever and self-diagnostics, for example, are lacking in the face of an exponential demand. Cities across the country are scrambling to cope with the surge in infections that have emptied pharmacy shelves and filled hospital wards, while contributing to apparent overcrowding in crematoriums.
This situation occurs after the announcement, at the beginning of December, in a context of growing exasperation among the population, of the end of most of the strict sanitary measures of the “zero Covid” policy that China has scrupulously applied since 2020, by abolishing Expensive quarantines and travel restrictions have a huge impact on the Chinese economy.
The end of mandatory testing also makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the true number of cases in reality. In addition, the authorities have changed their methodology to identify infections: now only people who died directly from respiratory failure linked to Covid-19 are counted in the statistics. A methodology that aims, according to experts, to reduce the number of deaths attributed to the pandemic.
The Chinese government also exercises tight control over the country’s media, with legions of online censors tasked with removing content deemed politically sensitive. Most government publications have downplayed the severity of the wave of infections, instead describing the abandonment of the “zero covid” policy as logical and controlled.
The World Health Organization, for its part, said it was “very concerned about the development of the situation in China” this week and asked Beijing to provide it with “more detailed information on the severity of the disease, hospital admissions and care intensive”. unit needs.
Source: BFM TV
