China is facing the world’s largest outbreak. According to minutes from an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission, as many as 248 million people, or nearly 18% of the population, likely contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December.
Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with Covid-19 on a single day this week, according to estimates from the government’s top health authority, making the country’s outbreak by far the world’s largest, an international news agency reported.
Unofficial reports claim that about 40 per cent of Beijing›s residents are currently infected with Covid. The CCP, according to reports, has shifted its stance on Covid, claiming it to be a mere flu.
As many as 248 million people, or nearly 18% of the population, likely contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December, according to minutes from an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission held on Wednesday, confirmed with people involved in the discussions. If accurate, the infection rate would dwarf the previous daily record of about 4 million, set in January 2022.
Shanghai, China’s megacity with a 25 million-strong population, is the worst sufferer. Case numbers have been growing since last week in Shanghai, where staff shortages are causing delays in delivery services. This comes months after Shanghai endured a brutal lockdown to stop the spread of Covid. Hospitals are struggling to cope with the number of infected patients, pharmacies are turning customers away empty-handed, businesses are shutting because staff are off sick, most schools have closed and usage of public transport is plummeting, the report claimed.
A surge of coronavirus cases has been sweeping across China since the government eased its strict lockdowns and measures to contain the spread of the virus, on December 7.
Chinese media outlets reported that infections are spreading among civil servants in several provinces, including Henan and Shandong. They said local authorities have closed their offices to the public and are calling on citizens to use online services instead, reported NHK World.
As cases rise in major Chinese cities, even people with mild symptoms are rushing to hospitals. Emergency call operators are receiving 30,000 calls a day, six times the average number of calls received.
Beijing’s swift dismantling of Covid Zerorestrictions has led to the unfettered spread of the highly contagious omicron variants in a population with low levels of natural immunity.
More than half the residents of Sichuan province, in China’s southwest, and the capital Beijing have been infected, according to the agency’s estimates.
Meanwhile, the minutes of the meeting didn’t note discussion on how many people have died. They did cite Ma Xiaowei, the head of the NHC, reiterating the new, much narrower definition used to count Covid fatalities. While acknowledging that deaths will inevitably occur as the virus spreads rapidly, he underscored that only people who die from Covid-induced pneumonia should be included in the mortality statistics.
The 37 million daily cases estimated for December 20 is a dramatic deviation from the official tally of just 3,049 infections reported in China for that day. It is also several times higher than the previous world record for the pandemic. Global cases hit an all-time high of 4 million on Jan. 19, 2022, amid an initial wave of omicron infections following its emergence in South Africa, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
