Half a million: the number is dizzying.
500,000 people are believed to be infected with Covid-19 every day in the Chinese city of Qingdao alone, according to a municipal health official, eager to show, in a quickly censored article, that the official statistics do not reflect the unprecedented wave of contaminations what the country is experiencing.
In early December, amid growing public exasperation, Beijing abruptly ended most of the strict “zero Covid” health measures it had been scrupulously applying since 2020, removing onerous quarantines and restrictions on trip to the considerable impact on the Chinese economy.
Since then, cases have exploded and a large part of the inhabitants have been left to fend for themselves, at a time when fever medication and self-tests are lacking in the face of exponential demand.
Read alsoCovid-19: how China wants to minimize the toll of its worst epidemic wave
Cities across the country are scrambling to cope with the upsurge in infections that have emptied pharmacy shelves and filled hospital wards, while contributing to apparent overcrowding at crematoriums.
A number of cases difficult to estimate
But the end of compulsory testing makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to estimate the number of cases, while the authorities have changed their methodology for identifying infections.
From now on, only people who died directly from respiratory failure linked to Covid-19 are counted in the statistics.
A methodology which aims, according to experts, to reduce the number of deaths attributed to the pandemic.
🇨🇳 250 million inhabitants, or 18% of the population, would have been infected in 20 days in #China.
Nothing is impossible: the Scientific Council estimated that 9 to 14 million inhabitants, or up to 21% of the population, had caught #Omicron in less than a month.
#Covid
1/5 pic.twitter.com/BMogfFECIF
— Nicolas Berrod (@nicolasberrod) December 23, 2022
But in the eastern city of Qingdao, a Communist Party-run news outlet quoted the municipal health official on Friday as saying the port city has recorded “between 490,000 and 530,000” new cases. per day.
The city of about 10 million people is "in a period of rapid transmission before approaching a peak", Bo Tao said, quoted in the article, adding that the infection rate is expected increase another 10% over the weekend.
The article was shared by several other news outlets, but had been edited on Saturday morning to remove the numbers.
Stubborn censorship
China's health ministry on Saturday reported 4,103 new infections nationwide the day before, with no new deaths.
In Shandong, the province where Qingdao is located, authorities have officially registered only 31 new local cases.
The Chinese government 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.
While some media have reported drug shortages and hospitals under strain, estimates of the actual number of cases remain scarce.
The government of eastern Jiangxi province said in a social media post on Friday that 80% of its population - or about 36 million people - would be infected by March.
More than 18,000 Covid patients have been admitted to major health care facilities across the province in the past two weeks, including nearly 500 serious cases but no deaths, the statement said.