Some surveys conducted by China’s health authorities show that up to 60% of the population of some cities in the country are infected with Covid19, the Health Times, an affiliate of the People’s Daily, the party’s official newspaper Chinese Communist, reported this Saturday (31).
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Sichuan Province in central China this week released the results of a survey of more than 158,500 residents, showing that the rate of people infected with the coronavirus exceeds 63%.
Sichuan province is one of the most populous in China, with a population of more than 80 million, and the capital Chengdu was one of the first cities to be hit by a largescale outbreak after the “Covid” began to dissipate. policy.zero” in early December.
The agency assured that the number of infections peaked around December 23 and was already “declining”.
For their part, the authorities of the southern island of Hainan, with 9.2 million inhabitants, announced this Friday that the estimated infection rate in the province has reached 50%, although its capital Haikou has already passed the peak calculations.
Two cities in the coastal province of Zhejiang (to the east), Quzhou and Zhoushan, estimate that between 30% and 40% of their populations have contracted the virus.
China Center for Disease Control chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou said this week that the wave of Covid infections plaguing the country is already “peaking” in places like Beijing, Tianjin (northeast) and the aforementioned Chengdu. have.
Wu said the spread has been “very rapid” in some areas such as Beijing and surrounding areas, central Sichuan and Chongqing regions, and southern provinces.
“In places like Shanghai (east), Hubei (middle) or Hunan (middle), the pandemic is still in a rapid spread phase,” said the epidemiologist.
The National Health Commission declared this Monday that from January 8, Covid will no longer be a category A disease in China, the maximum level of danger (whose necessary measures to contain it are more stringent) to become a category B disease. These include looser controls that effectively mark the end of nearly three years of “Covid Zero” policies, which authorities have abandoned in recent weeks.
The rapid spread of the virus across the country has cast doubt on the reliability of official figures, which have reported few recent deaths from the disease, although municipalities and provinces estimate a significant proportion of their populations are infected.
According to an expert quoted by the state press, deaths from Covid disease in patients who have contracted the coronavirus are not counted as deaths from the disease.
According to reports on the country’s social media, hospitals in major cities such as Beijing or Chongqing are under great pressure and are struggling to care for all patients.
The World Health Organization was recently “very concerned” about the development of Covid in China and called for “more information”, to which Beijing replied that it has been sharing its data “in an open and transparent manner” since the beginning of the pandemic.
The Chinese government assured earlier this month that “conditions” have been met for the country to adjust its strict “Covid Zero” policy in the face of a “new situation” in which the virus is causing fewer deaths.
The changes came after the restrictions were exhausted, amid protests in different parts of the country, after the death of ten people in what appeared to be a cramped building in Urumqi (northwest), with slogans like “I don’t want PCR, I want eat” or “Give my freedom back”.