China’s Zhejiang is battling over a million daily COVID-19 infections. This number will likely double in days to come, according to the provincial government.
China did not report any COVID deaths in the mainland despite a massive increase in cases, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Experts and citizens have demanded more data after the rise in infections following Beijing’s radical changes to its zero-COVID policies. This policy had placed hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens under constant lockdown and disabled the second-largest country.
The National Health Commission had stopped reporting symptoms of asymptomatic infection, making it difficult to compile national figures for China. The commission stopped publishing daily numbers on Sunday, and the China CDC published them.
Zhejiang was one of the areas that have been able to assess recent increases in infection, including those with asymptomatic symptoms.
The Zhejiang government released a statement saying that the infection peak will arrive in Zhejiang earlier and enter an elevated period around New Year’s Day. During this time the daily new infections number could reach two million,
Zhejiang has a population of 65.4 million. He said one of the 13583 patients in its hospitals had severe symptoms due to COVID. 242 of the other cases were from underlying conditions.
China has narrowed the definition of COVID death reporting, limiting it to COVID-caused pneumonia and respiratory failure. This raised eyebrows among international health professionals.
Since Beijing relaxed its restrictions, the World Health Organization (WHO) has not received data about new COVID hospitalizations from China. According to the organization, the gap in data could be caused by the difficulty of the authorities to count cases in China’s largest country.
Capital Economics’ research notes stated that China is now in the worst weeks of the pandemic. The authorities have made almost no effort to stop the spread of infection and with migration before Lunar New Year, all parts of China that are not in major COVID waves will soon be.”
Recent estimates by Qingdao, Dongguan, and Dongguan of COVID infection rates in the cities have been significantly higher than the daily national toll of cases without symptoms.
According to the state media, healthcare in the country has come under tremendous strain. The staff has been asked to stay home when they are sick, and retired doctors from rural areas were rehired for grass-roots efforts.
The Lunar New Year, which occurs in January and sees huge returns home from abroad, is a great way to increase the urgency.
A Zhejiang official said that the number of visits to Zhejiang fever centers has risen 140% in the last week.
According to an Hangzhou official, daily requests for emergency services in Zhejiang’s capital of Hangzhou have more than tripled since last year.
Suzhou, an eastern Chinese city, announced late Saturday that it received 7,233 emergency calls Thursday night.
