A decision that will not diminish doubts about the real number of cases of Covid-19 in the Chinese population.
China's National Health Commission, which serves as a ministry, announced on Sunday that it will no longer publish daily figures for Covid-19 cases and deaths, as it has done since early 2020.
She gave no explanation, but these statistics no longer reflected the unprecedented wave of contamination that has hit China since the abandonment on December 7 of the strict sanitary measures of the “zero Covid” policy.
Previously, quasi-compulsory PCR tests made it possible to reliably follow the epidemic trend.
But infected people now carry out self-tests at home and rarely report the results to the authorities, which prevents having reliable figures.
Read alsoCovid-19: hospitals under pressure, overwhelmed crematoriums… China faces a massive wave of infections
“The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will publish information related to the epidemic, for reference and research purposes,” explained the national health commission, without specifying the type or frequency. data that will be published by the CDC.
An announcement greeted with irony by the population
The Chinese, who saw a total discrepancy between the contamination of a large part of their relatives and the official statistics, greeted the announcement with derision.
“Eventually they wake up and understand that they can no longer fool people” with undervalued figures, writes a user of the social network Weibo.
“It was the best and biggest fake statistics office in the country,” said another.
"Are there any crematorium employees here?"
Are you overloaded?
Can you talk about it?
», Calls a third.
Many crematoriums have recently reported an unusually high influx of bodies.
A situation largely ignored by the Chinese media.
They evoke, however, to a certain extent, hospitals under tension in the face of the arrival of patients and the shortage of anti-fever drugs.
Another source of controversy which discredited the official statistics: under a new methodology, only people who died directly from respiratory failure linked to Covid-19 are now counted as deceased from the disease.
China has only announced six deaths from Covid-19 since restrictions were lifted.
However, many seniors do not have a complete vaccination schedule and find themselves on the front line facing the virus.
Half a million people are infected daily in Qingdao, a city of 10 million in the east of the country, a municipal official quoted by the official press estimated this week.
