China will stop releasing comprehensive data on new Covid cases after the dropping of mandatory testing meant the numbers no longer reflected reality.
The country will only report symptomatic cases from now on because it’s hard to gauge the number of those infected without symptoms in the absence of testing, the National Health Commission said in a statement on Wednesday.
China reported just 2,249 new infections nationwide for Tuesday. Hong Kong, with a population that’s almost 200 times smaller, recorded about 15,000 cases on the same day.
After years of meticulously testing and tracking its citizens for the virus, China abruptly abandoned that approach this month with the end of Covid Zero. The lack of testing now means there is no accurate way to gauge the rate of infection in a population that had previously largely avoided exposure to the virus.
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China divided positive cases into symptomatic and asymptomatic categories during the pandemic, a distinction not made elsewhere in the world that complicated getting an accurate snapshot of the virus situation.
There are clear signs the virus is spreading rapidly. In Beijing alone, hospitals have been overwhelmed, while the statistics bureau canceled its planned in-person briefing on the release of November economic data on Thursday citing “work arrangements.”
{{/usCountry}}There are clear signs the virus is spreading rapidly. In Beijing alone, hospitals have been overwhelmed, while the statistics bureau canceled its planned in-person briefing on the release of November economic data on Thursday citing “work arrangements.”
{{/usCountry}}China has surprised many by its dramatic pivot to living with Covid, especially given the nation is entering winter, its elderly vaccination rate is well below other countries, and the healthcare system is under-resourced.
The rapid reopening could result in some 5 million people hospitalized and up to 700,000 deaths, according to Sam Fazeli, Bloomberg Intelligence’s chief pharmaceutical analyst.
China’s mindset is “there’s not so much we can do, we’ve done the best we can,” Fazeli said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Tuesday. “We’ve got the blueprint for what the West did and what happened, so let’s just let it rip.”