The Covid-19 infection affects half a million people daily in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao, a municipal official revealed, in a quickly censored article, but quoted by Agence France Presse.
The article appeared in a media outlet run by the Chinese Communist Party on Friday, which quoted Qingdao’s municipal health official as saying the port city was registering “between 490,000 and 530,000” new cases a day.
In early December, in the face of protests by the population in several cities, the Beijing government ended most of the sanitary measures of the strict “covid zero” policy, which has been in place since 2020, abolishing quarantines and travel restrictions. , which had a considerable impact on the Chinese economy.
Since then, Covid cases in China have skyrocketed and, reports the French agency, there is a lack of anti-fever medicines and self-tests, due to exponential demand.
Across the country, cities are struggling to cope with a resurgence in infections, which have emptied pharmacy shelves and filled hospital wards, contributing to overcrowding in crematoriums.
The end of mandatory screening makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the number of cases, while authorities change the methodology for counting infections.
The Chinese authorities count as victims of Covid-19 only those who died of respiratory failure directly related to the disease, a methodology that aims, according to analysts, to reduce the number of deaths attributed to the pandemic.
Source: TSF
