China will no longer publish its daily share of new COVID-19 infections

China announced today that it will stop publishing the daily report in which, since the beginning of 2020, it has detailed new cases of covid-19 and deaths from the disease, after the rapid spread of the virus across the country has cast doubt on the reliability of official figures.

“From now on, the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention will not release information about the pandemic on a daily basis.”, indicated the National Health Commission in a brief statement in which it does not detail the reasons why it has made this decision.

LOOK HERE: China: Shanghai suggests not leaving home at Christmas to avoid contagion by COVID-19

The body added that yes “publish relevant information about the pandemic for reference and research”, but did not specify what type of data it will offer from now on or with what periodicity.

In recent weeks, the health authorities had already stopped disclosing the number of infections that, according to their standards, were considered asymptomatic, although these were only reported in the aforementioned daily report but never added to the official case balances, to which only those infected who did present the required symptoms were added.

In addition, the end of the obligation to undergo routine PCR tests for most of the population resulted in a significantly lower detection of cases than the actual spread of the virus, since those who were asymptomatic and those with mild symptoms received the green light. of the Government to quarantine their homes.

37 million infections a day?

The last official part, published yesterday, reported only 4,128 new infections and no deaths, placing the sum of symptomatic infections since the start of the pandemic at almost 400,000 and the number of deaths at 5,241.

However, the supposed minutes of a meeting of the National Health Commission echoed by Bloomberg indicated that the real number of new daily infections could have reached 37 million and that, in the first days of this month, some 248 Millions of people -18% of the national population- contracted the covid.

MORE INFORMATION: The Chinese city that registers a record of half a million daily infections of coronavirus

In recent days, doubts have also arisen about the fidelity of the data on deaths offered by the health authorities, which barely count a handful of them due, according to an expert quoted by the state press, to the fact that deaths caused by underlying diseases in patients who were infected with the coronavirus are not counted as covid deaths.

The British health sector analysis company Airfinity estimated this week that China would currently be registering some 5,000 daily deaths from covid, while its study places the number of new infections each day at around one million new cases, well below the figure quoted by Bloomberg but infinitely higher than those reflected in the official reports.

Also this week, the World Health Organization showed itself “very worried” due to the evolution of the covid in China and claimed “more information” in this regard, to which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded that Beijing has shared its data “openly, punctually and transparently” since the beginning of the pandemic.

Source: Elcomercio

jack

I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.