A worker disinfects the Wuhan train station in March.STR / AFP
In China, every official figure contains a mystery.
More than ever in this pandemic, when life, death, and government effectiveness are measured in bars, lines, and graphs.
The Asian giant has been one of the countries that has best managed the health crisis, as evidenced by the barely 100,000 cases that appear in state registries.
Most of them (70%) were located in the Hubei province whose capital, the now famous city of Wuhan, was home to the original epicenter of the pandemic.
A recent study, however, suggests that the cases could be many more.
Last April, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) carried out a serological prevalence test involving 34,000 individuals.
Their results, which saw the light this Monday, conclude that 4.4% of them had developed antibodies against covid-19, from which it is clear that they had suffered and overcome the ailment.
Extrapolation of this ratio assumes that in Wuhan, home to 11 million inhabitants - more than New York, London or any European capital - up to half a million people would have been infected, a number ten times higher than the 50,000 positives than the official figures They reflected mid-April when the study was conducted.
A similar study carried out in Spain in four phases (the last, in December), offered as a result that at least 9.9% of Spaniards - more than four and a half million people - have had contact with the coronavirus.
China has been criticized for its initial handling of the pandemic and its delay in alerting the international community about the seriousness of the situation on the ground, a thesis that these data seem to corroborate.
The Chinese government, however, has dismissed any reproach and severely punished everyone who has dared to challenge the official narrative, from Dr. Li Wenliang to journalist Zhang Zhan, sentenced on Monday to four years in prison for her news coverage.
At least three other independent reporters have been arrested and one of them remains unaccounted for.
The nature of a pandemic, on the other hand, makes some inaccuracy inevitable when counting cases, given that testing capacities were limited during those first days of January when Wuhan hospitals were overwhelmed by what then it was a newly discovered mysterious pathogen.
Furthermore, the characteristics of the virus, with an incubation period of up to two weeks, made statistical work even more difficult.
The findings of this study also prove the effectiveness of the measures taken by the Chinese authorities.
The prevalence rate declines markedly outside of Wuhan, where the combination of home confinements and perimeter blockade for 11 weeks allowed to stifle the spread of the virus throughout the national territory.
In Hubei province the percentage drops to 0.44% and among the 12,000 tested in six other Chinese cities - including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou - only two people tested positive.
"Wuhan is the safest city in the world."
This expression has become recurrent both in the city and in the rest of the country.
But, although the numbers are much higher than expected, the city is still vulnerable as it is far from herd immunity, which experts estimate around 60%.
Reappearance in Beijing, which closes ten areas
China has solved the multiple registered throughout 2020 through a protocol in constant improvement based on migratory control, tracking through
big data
, partial quarantines and mass testing.
The last threatened city is Beijing, which has reported seven new locally transmitted infections in the last 24 hours.
This new focus has been active since last December 18 and there are already 19 positives detected since then, that is, in the last ten days.
Most of those infected are located in the northeastern district of Shunyi, where the authorities have decreed the perimeter closure in ten areas.
These are the first lockdowns in the Chinese capital since June.
In addition, the Government has begun a generalized testing campaign and has recovered "emergency preventive efforts", as announced by a municipal spokesperson.
All events that draw large crowds have been canceled and the city has regained the ubiquitous temperature and mobility controls via QR codes.
Information about the coronavirus
- Here you can follow the last hour on the evolution of the pandemic
- Restrictions search engine: What can I do in my municipality?
- This is how the coronavirus curve evolves in the world
- Download the tracking application for Spain
- Guide to action against the disease