China Has Stopped Publishing Daily COVID Data Amid Reports Of A Huge Spike In Cases – China has ceased publishing daily COVID-19 data, heightening fears that the country’s leadership is concealing negative information about the pandemic following the easing of restrictions. China’s National Health Commission announced in a statement that, effective on Sunday, it will no longer post daily data and that, “from now on, the Chinese CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) will release relevant COVID information for reference and research.”
The NHC did not specify why the change was made or how frequently the CDC would release data. Since limits were loosened, there has been an increase in new cases in China. The provincial government of China’s eastern Zhejiang province reported over one million new cases every day. Meanwhile, Bloomberg and the Financial Times reported on a leaked estimate by top Chinese health officials that as many as 250 million people may have been infected in the first 20 days of December.
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Despite the increase in cases, China has banned the majority of public testing booths, thus there is no precise public measurement of the prevalence of infections throughout the country. Last week, Chinese health officials defended the country’s high threshold for assessing whether a COVID-19-related death has occurred. China currently excludes anyone infected with COVID who died but had preexisting health issues, and in the four days before the health commission’s decision to stop providing statistics, China recorded zero COVID deaths.
The World Health Organization warned China last week that it may be “behind the curve” in terms of data reporting and offered assistance with data collection. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, stated, “In China, what’s been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling up.”
Last week, Airfinity, a British health data company, calculated that China’s genuine COVID estimates were one million infections and five thousand deaths every day. On Friday, a health official in Qingdao, Shandong province, eastern China, reported that the city was experiencing approximately 500,000 new COVID cases every day.
The story was distributed by news outlets, but the statistics appear to have been removed afterward. There has allegedly been an increase in the demand for crematoriums. As a result of nationwide protests critical of the government, China has rescinded a number of its extremely restrictive COVID restrictions earlier this month.
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At least ten people were murdered in a fire at an apartment building in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, which ignited the protests. According to others, the deaths could have been avoided if restrictions had been less stringent. In a recent briefing, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington predicted up to one million deaths in China by 2023 if social distancing rules are not maintained. Many are fearful that the Lunar New Year celebrations in China next month could become super spreader events.
