Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with Covid-19 on a single day this week. If accurate, the infection rate would dwarf the previous daily record of about 4 million. As many as 248 million people likely contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December.
More than half the residents of Sichuan province, in China’s southwest, and the capital Beijing have been infected. Precise infection rates have been difficult to establish in other countries during the pandemic. How the Chinese health regulator came up with its estimate is unclear, as the country shut down its once ubiquitous network of PCR testingbooths earlier this month.
In China, people are now employing fast antigen testing to find illnesses, and they are not required to disclose positive results. The daily total of instances without symptoms is no longer released by the government. China’s current wave is expected to peak between mid-December and late January, according to Chen Qin, chief economist at data consultancy MetroDataTech.
Missing Deaths
While recognising that deaths would undoubtedly occur because to the virus’s fast spread, he emphasised that only persons who die from Covid-induced pneumonia should be included in mortality statistics. Beijing, which was the first city to be affected, is now experiencing severe and serious Covid cases, according to officials, even if the city’s general infection incidence is down. In the meantime, the pandemic is moving from China’s cities to its rural areas, where there are frequently inadequate medical supplies. The organisation issued a warning to every region advising them to get ready for an uptick in serious illnesses.
A significant difference between the official count of merely 3,049 illnesses reported in China for that day and the estimated 37 million daily cases for December 20. Furthermore, it surpasses the previous pandemic-related global record by a wide margin. On January 19, 2022, an initial wave of omicron infections following its introduction in South Africa caused the number of cases worldwide to reach an all-time high of 4 million.
The magnitude of the infection indicated by the government estimates highlights the difficulty China now faces after abruptly departing from the Covid Zero programme that had mostly controlled the virus for the previous three years. Hospitals in large Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai are swamped by an unexpected spike of patients, and crematoriums are having trouble keeping up.
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