China to begin weekly and then monthly reporting of deaths and serious cases of Covid-19

The Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism under China’s State Executive Council said on Tuesday that information on deaths and serious cases of Covid-19 in the country will be published weekly and then monthly, local media reported Wednesday.

The National Health Commission already announced on Monday that from 8 January Covid-19 will no longer be a category A disease – the maximum level of danger and the most stringent measures are needed to contain it – to become category B, which includes weaker control, thus marking the end of the “zero Covid” policy that has been in place for almost three years.

After this date, information on deaths and serious cases of illness caused by the disease will become weekly, and “following the development of the pandemic” will become “monthly”, the Joint Mechanism said, without providing further details on this issue.

Likewise, power will not report the number of close contacts of those infected with Covid-19 and they will not even distinguish between local and imported cases, contrary to what has been indicated in the daily reports published since the beginning of the pandemic.

Following reports of an explosion of positive cases, China is stopping posting daily Covid-19 data updates.

In addition completion of mandatory routine PCR tests for most of the population, this has resulted in case detections well below the actual spread of the virus, and asymptomatic people and people with mild symptoms can now be quarantined in their homes.

The rapid spread of the virus across the country has cast doubt on the credibility of the official figures, which reported only several deaths from the diseasealthough, for example, the province of Zhejiang (east) recently estimated that one million of its inhabitants are infected every day.

According to an expert quoted by the state press, death from an underlying disease in patients infected with the new coronavirus is not considered a death from Covid-19.

Hospitals in major cities such as Beijing have been affected great pressure and difficulty in serving all patientsaccording to the feedback collected in the social networks of the country.

China: Several official deaths from Covid-19, explosion in demand for crematoria. The numbers are being questioned more and more

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed “very concerned” about the development of Covid-19 in China and demanded “more information”, to which the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded that Beijing has been sharing its data “openly, punctually and transparently” since the start of the pandemic.

Earlier this month, the Chinese government assured that there were “conditions” for the country to adjust its strict “zero Covid” policy in the face of the pandemic. “new situation” in which the virus causes fewer deaths.

The mainstream press also began a few weeks ago to minimize the risk of the Omicron option through numerous articles and interviews with experts, a change in argument that was accompanied by a loosening of some of the toughest restrictions.

The changes took place after strong protests of the population in various parts of the countryafter the death of ten people in an apparently closed building in Urumqi (Northwest), indicating people’s fatigue from the crackdown imposed by the Chinese government.

Covid-19 wave in China casts doubt on end of health emergency, WHO says