China stops publishing daily Covid figures amid reports of explosion in cases | China

China’s National Health Commission (NHC) has stopped releasing daily Covid-19 data amid concerns about the reliability of the numbers after infections exploded following the sudden easing of tight restrictions. Did.

“Relevant Covid information will be released by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for reference and research,” the committee said in a statement, specifying the reasons for the changes and how often the China CDC will update the public with new Covid information. did not.

The abrupt stop in reporting daily cases and deaths comes after Beijing locked down hundreds of millions of its citizens and made sweeping changes to its zero-Covid policy that beat the world’s second largest. , due to growing concern over the lack of critical information available. – Maximum economy.

Despite a record surge in infections, the NHC had reported four straight days of no Covid deaths nationwide before it stopped publishing data. Last week, China narrowed its definition of Covid deaths, counting only those from Covid-caused pneumonia or respiratory failure.

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that China may be struggling with tallying Covid-19 infections. WHO has received no new Covid hospitalization data from China since Beijing eased restrictions. The lack of data transparency has made it difficult to monitor the scale of this latest Covid outbreak.

Officially, China has reported fewer than 10 Covid-related deaths in the past two weeks, but the surge in demand for crematoriums has been interpreted as evidence that the real death toll is much higher.

UK-based health data firm Airfinity estimated last week that China is experiencing more than 1 million infections and 5,000 deaths per day.

On Friday, Qingdao’s local health officials reported that the city was seeing “between 490,000 and 530,000” new Covid cases a day. The report was shared by several other news outlets, but appeared to have been edited by Saturday morning to remove case numbers.

State media said the country’s health system was under tremendous strain, with staff forced to work while sick and retired health workers in rural areas were rehired to support grassroots efforts. We sought.

Adding to the urgency is the approach of the Chinese New Year in January, when huge numbers of people travel across the country.

Reuters contributed to this report