The Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council of the Chinese Executive declared this Tuesday that the deaths and serious cases of Covid-19 in the country will be announced weekly and, subsequently, monthly, local media reported on Wednesday.
The National Health Commission had already announced this Monday that, as of January 8, Covid-19 will cease to be a category A disease -the maximum level of danger and for its containment the most severe measures are necessary- to pass to be category B, which includes more flexible control, thus marking the end of the “Zero Covid” policy that had been in place for almost three years.
As of that date, the information on deaths and serious cases due to the disease will become weekly and, “following the evolution of the pandemic”, it will become “monthly”, said the Joint Mechanism, which did not provide further details. about.
Likewise, the authorities will not notify the number of close contacts of those infected with Covid-19 nor will they distinguish between local and imported cases, contrary to what the daily reports published since the start of the pandemic indicate.
In addition, the end of mandatory routine PCR testing for the majority of the population resulted in significantly less case detection than the actual spread of the virus, and asymptomatic people and those with mild symptoms can now self-quarantine at home.
The rapid spread of the virus throughout the country has called into question the reliability of official figures, which report only a handful of deaths from the disease, although, for example, the province of Zhejiang (east) recently estimated that one million of its inhabitants they died. .get infected every day.
According to an expert quoted by the state press, deaths caused by underlying diseases in patients who were infected by the new coronavirus are not counted as deaths from Covid-19.
Hospitals in large cities such as Beijing have been under great pressure and difficulties in caring for all patients, according to testimonies collected on the country’s social networks.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) was “very concerned” about the evolution of Covid-19 in China and demanded “more information”, to which the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded that Beijing has shared your data “in an open way”. , timely and transparent” since the beginning of the pandemic.
The Chinese government assured earlier this month that the “conditions” were in place for the country to adjust its strict “Covid zero” policy in the face of a “new situation” in which the virus causes fewer deaths.
The official press also began a few weeks ago to minimize the risk of the Omicron variant through numerous articles and interviews with experts, a change in arguments that was accompanied by the relaxation of some of the most severe restrictions.
The changes occurred after strong protests by the population in various parts of the country, after the death of ten people in an apparently confined building in Urumqi (northwest), demonstrating the fatigue of the population in the face of the severe measures imposed by the Chinese Government.
Source: TSF
