In China, the national health commission, which acts as the ministry of health, announced on Sunday December 25 that it would no longer publish the daily figures of cases and deaths due to Covid-19, as it had done since. the beginning of 2020.
The Commission gave no explanation. But these statistics no longer corresponded to the unprecedented wave of contaminations that have occurred since the abandonment on December 7, against a background of growing exasperation of the population, of the strict sanitary measures of the zero Covid policy. Previously, quasi-compulsory PCR tests made it possible to reliably follow the epidemic trend. But infected people now carry out self-tests, the results of which they rarely report to the authorities, which prevents reliable figures from being obtained.
“As of today, we will no longer publish daily information regarding the epidemic”soberly announced the National Health Commission. “The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will publish information related to the outbreak, for reference and research purposes”she adds, without however specifying the type of data that will be published, nor their frequency.
Drug shortage
The Chinese, who saw a total discrepancy between the contamination of a large part of their relatives and the official statistics, greeted the announcement with derision.
“Eventually they wake up and find they can’t fool people anymore” with undervalued numbers, writes a user of the Weibo social network. “It was the best and biggest fake statistics office in the country”judges another. “Are there any crematorium workers here?” Are you overloaded? Can you talk about it? »asks a third.
Many crematorium officials interviewed by Agence France-Presse (AFP) recently reported an unusually high influx of bodies. A situation largely ignored by the Chinese media. They evoke, however, to a certain extent, hospitals under tension in the face of the arrival of patients, and the shortage of anti-fever drugs.
Another source of controversy which discredited the official statistics: under a new methodology, only people who died directly from respiratory failure linked to Covid-19 were counted as dead from Covid.
China has only announced six deaths from Covid-19 since restrictions were lifted. However, only 65.8% of people over 80 are fully vaccinated, according to authorities. Many seniors therefore find themselves on the front line of the virus.
Half a million people are infected daily in Qingdao, a city of 10 million in the east of the country, a city official reported this week in a quickly censored article.