According to a media source, China’s National Health Commission has said that it would no longer disclose daily Covid-19 infection numbers as the virus ravages the populace in the absence of rolling lockdowns, widespread citizen surveillance, and mandatory testing.
According to the health ministry’s announcement on its official website, ‘as of today, we will no longer post daily statistics on the epidemic, with any data given by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention for reference and research’. The statement comes as China said on Monday that it will abolish the requirement for international tourists to undergo a quarantine upon arrival as of January 8; the requirement has been in force since March 2020.
It also came after a ministerial document from December 20 that was leaked, which analysts said was probably the outcome of computer modelling in the absence of widespread testing. The document said that due to the removal of control measures, Covid-19 may now affect about 250 million people. In the lack of widespread testing, officials had already issued a warning that the current outbreak’s progress had become ‘difficult to follow’. The former editor-in-chief of the Global Times and well-known pro-government pundit Hu Xijin claimed that the data made public recently had been ‘seriously manipulated’ and that no one should have accepted them.
Anecdotal data suggests that hospital strain is mounting while death rates are soaring. On Sunday, a resident of Shanghai posted a video to social media showing hundreds of people waiting in line to be served at the city’s Baoxing funeral parlour, with the line extending out the gate and onto the street. A hospital in Taizhou recently announced that it had received two million emergency room visits in recent days.
According to a member of the political and legal committee system of the Chinese Communist Party, which controls law enforcement in the country, intense pressure on crematoriums in the city led authorities from the local civil affairs bureau to seize control of the industry. No one is now permitted to bring the remains of their deceased relatives to funeral homes; instead, they must wait for the personnel to pick them up.
The government’s push to revive the economy after months of harm under Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policy is what is causing the current surge of diseases. This shows the government is targeting ‘herd immunity’. The official said that they were specifically advising those who tested positive to report to work so that the illness may spread as quickly as possible. According to RFA, he claimed, ‘It’s like this now all throughout the nation’.
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