Chinese officials estimate that about 250 million people, or 18 percent of the population, were infected with Covid-19 in the first 20 days of December, as Beijing abruptly dismantled restrictions that had contained the disease for nearly three years .
The estimates, which include 37 million people, or 2.6 percent of the population, who were infected on Tuesday alone, were revealed by Sun Yang, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in a health briefing on Wednesday, two people familiar with the matter said. with the subject
Sun said the rate of spread of Covid in the country continued to rise and estimated that more than half the population of Beijing and Sichuan was already infected, people briefed on the meeting said.
The explosion of cases followed Beijing’s decision this month to abandon its zero-Covid policy, which kept the virus at bay through mass testing, mandatory quarantine and draconian lockdowns.
The Sun figures, which were provided at a closed-door meeting, contrast with figures published by the National Health Commission, which reported 62,592 symptomatic cases of Covid during the same period. Last week, China stopped publicly trying to count the total number of infections after authorities scaled back Covid testing.
The lack of official published information has led Washington and the World Health Organization to push Beijing to be more transparent about case counts, disease severity, hospital admission numbers and other health statistics that have been widely available in other countries.
In China’s capital and other cities, the wave of Covid infections has overwhelmed hospitals with an influx of elderly, bedridden patients, leaving emergency rooms and intensive care units with few available beds.
However, the country has proceeded to scrap the zero-Covid policy as the medical toll rises. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee announced on Saturday that long-awaited quarantine-free travel between the city and mainland China would resume in mid-January.
“The central government has agreed to fully reopen the borders in a gradual and orderly manner,” Lee told reporters after returning from a four-day trip to Beijing, where he met with President Xi Jinping. “Families separated for almost three years due to the pandemic can be reunited. . .[and]Hong Kong’s economy can be strengthened.”
Chambers of commerce and industry leaders in the financial center have called for months for a full reopening of the borders, as restrictions on movement hampered the territory’s economy, which is expected to suffer an annual contraction of 3.2 per hundred this year
The NHC’s official account of Wednesday’s event provided few details about what the country’s top health officials discussed.
But at the meeting, Ma Xiaowei, director of the NHC, demanded that hospitals deal with overflowing emergency rooms and move patients to inpatient wards, said one of the people who attended the event. He also urged medium- and large-sized hospitals to take in more patients with severe symptoms and promised that regulators would not hold them responsible for rising death rates.
Meanwhile, the estimate of 250 million cases raised further doubts about the accuracy of official Covid statistics and how authorities account for deaths from the disease.
The NHC reported just 4,103 new local cases on Saturday over the previous day, with no Covid-related deaths for the second consecutive day. Hong Kong, on the other hand, reported 20,460 new local cases in the previous 24 hours on Saturday.
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China has officially reported only eight deaths since December 1. Top health officials said this week they had narrowed the definition of what constitutes a death from Covid, in a move that reduced the number of public deaths.
However, crematoria in the Chinese capital are struggling to cope with a surge of corpses and bodies are piling up at hospitals visited by the Financial Times in recent days.
Several models, including one partially funded by the Chinese CDC, have predicted that the country could suffer up to 1 million deaths from Covid during its reopening.
The National Health Commission did not respond to a request for comment.
Additional reporting by Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong