In China, half a million cases are recorded daily in one city, according to a local official

Half a million people are infected with the coronavirus every day in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao alone, a municipal health official reported Friday, December 23, explaining, in a quickly censored article, that the statistician is not reflecting the unprecedented wave of contamination it is experiencing. country. Recorded coastal city “between 490,000 and 530,000” New cases every day, according to a news outlet run by the Communist Party, quoting a municipal health official on Friday.

The city is located with a population of about 10 million people “In a period of rapid transition before approaching the climax.”Bo Tao was quoted as saying, adding that the infection rate is expected to rise by another 10% over the weekend. The article was syndicated by several other news outlets but was edited Saturday morning to remove figures. On Saturday, China’s health ministry reported 4,103 new infections nationwide the day before, and there were no deaths. In Shandong, the province where Qingdao is located, the authorities have officially recorded only 31 new local cases.

The end of the ‘zero covid’ policy

In early December, against the backdrop of growing discontent among the population, Beijing without warning ended most of the stringent health measures of the “zero Covid” policy it had meticulously implemented since 2020, scrapping onerous quarantines and travel restrictions to great effect. on the Chinese economy. Since then, Covid cases have exploded in China, and much of the population has been left to fend for themselves, at a time when fever medicine and self-tests are in short supply in the face of surging demand.

The end of compulsory testing makes it very difficult if not impossible to estimate the number of cases, while authorities have changed their methodology for identifying infections. From now on, people who died directly from respiratory failure related to Covid-19 are not counted in the statistics. The Chinese government exercises strict control over the country’s media, with legions of internet censors tasked with removing content deemed politically sensitive. Most government publications have downplayed the severity of the wave of infections, instead describing abandoning the “zero Covid” policy as logical and controlled.