“We need to have a more focused patriotic health campaign.
Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered on Monday to "build a bulwark" against Covid-19 and "protect" lives in China, as his country faces an outbreak of contamination after the abandonment of health restrictions.
"The prevention and control of Covid-19 in China is facing a new situation with new tasks," said Xi Jinping on Monday quoted by state television CCTV.
This is the Beijing strongman's first public comment since the unexpected abandonment of most health measures.
Since 2020, China has imposed strict measures, in the name of a so-called “zero Covid” policy which has made it possible to protect those most at risk and those who are poorly vaccinated.
The power put an end without notice on December 7 to most of the measures, against a backdrop of growing exasperation of the population and considerable impact on the economy.
The number of cases has since exploded, raising fears of high mortality among the oldest, who are particularly vulnerable.
An official balance sheet in flagrant discrepancy
This lifting of restrictions could lead to the death of around a million people in the coming months, according to estimates from several Western studies.
China announced on Sunday that it would no longer publish statistics on Covid-19.
They were widely criticized because of their total discrepancy with the current epidemic wave hitting the country.
Read alsoCovid-19: how China wants to minimize the toll of its worst epidemic wave
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.
According to the official report, the most populous country on the planet has recorded only six deaths from Covid since the lifting of restrictions.
A figure largely underestimated according to many experts.
The Chinese have noticed in recent days a glaring discrepancy between official statistics and the contamination of a large part of their relatives, or even their death.
The large metropolis of Canton (south), populated by 19 million inhabitants, has thus announced the postponement “after January 10” of the funeral ceremonies.
In the capital Beijing, the authorities spoke on Saturday of “a large number of infected people” and called for “everything to be done to improve the recovery rate and reduce the mortality rate”.