Against the background of a massive wave of infections, China has stopped publishing daily corona data after almost three years. The number of new infections and deaths is no longer announced daily, the National Health Commission said on Sunday. The Commission did not give a reason for this.
The China Center for Disease Control and Prevention will continue to “release information about the outbreak for reference and research purposes,” it said. The Commission did not comment on the nature and frequency of these publications.
Internet users in China responded cynically to the announcement. “It was the best and largest office for fake statistics in the country,” wrote a user on the online service Weibo about the authority that had previously published the official corona data. Another wrote: “Finally waking up and realizing they can’t fool people anymore.”
According to the Bloomberg news agency and the Financial Times, internal estimates indicate that 248 million people in China have contracted the corona virus since the beginning of December. The official statistics for the three weeks of December mentioned only mention 62,000 infections nationwide. This is also contradicted by the information provided by a representative of the authorities in Qingdao. According to this, almost 500,000 people are currently suffering from the virus every day in the city of millions.
The People’s Republic surprisingly heralded the end of its controversial zero-Covid policy this month after nationwide protests. Since then, the number of infections has skyrocketed. Medicines are sometimes scarce and hospitals are overcrowded. Crematoria and undertakers are also apparently having problems because of the increasing number of deaths.
According to the authorities, it is now impossible to estimate the number of corona cases due to the end of the obligation to test. The authorities have also narrowed the medical definition of corona deaths, so the number of corona deaths is lower than it actually is, according to observers. Officially, only six corona deaths have been reported since the corona measures were lifted.
