Covid is spreading fast in China, new signs suggest

Even though official central government figures remain low, regional figures point to explosive epidemics and overstretched health systems.

Since China abandoned its restrictive "zero Covid" policy about two weeks ago, the intensity and scale of the country's first nationwide outbreak has remained largely a mystery. With the country ending mass testing, the case count is less useful. The government has a narrow definition of deaths that should be considered to be caused by Covid. Anecdotal evidence, like social media posts of hospital morgues overcrowded with body bags, is quickly deleted by censors.

Now a picture is emerging of the virus spreading like wildfire.

One ​​province and three cities have reported Covid estimates far exceeding official counts in recent days. At a press conference on Sunday, an official in Zhejiang province, home to 65 million people, estimated that daily Covid cases there had exceeded one million.

In the eastern city of Qingdao, a population of 10 million, a health minister said on Friday there were about half a million new cases every day, a number he said rise sharply in the coming days, local news sites reported.

In Dongguan, a city of seven million people in central Guangdong province, a report from the municipal health commission on Friday estimated between 250,000 and 300,000 new cases per day.

ImageCovid patients in the lobby of a hospital in Chongqing, China, on Friday.Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Ima ges

And in northwestern Shaanxi province, officials in Yulin, a city of about 3.6 million people, recorded 157,000 infections ed Friday, with models estimating that more than a third of the city's population had already been infected, according to local media.

These numbers contrast sharply with those of the Chinese national health commission survey, which on Friday reported around 4,000 cases of Covid for the whole country. It's also a contrast to the image the ruling Communist Party has presented since its abrupt about-face on Covid policy in early December. Health experts and state media have downplayed the severity of Covid, focusing on stories of recovery rather than serious illness. The result was a one-sided presentation of an epidemic that some experts say could cause more than a million deaths in the coming months.

China does not acknowledged seven Covid deaths in the past two weeks and a few thousand new cases a day, what health experts call a vast undercount.

On Sunday, China's National Health Commission announced without explanation that it is no longer providing daily Covid data. The Chinese Center for Disease Control will provide this information, the commission said, without specifying how often.

Karen Grepin, public health expert at the University of Hong Kong, estimates that China could face tens of millions of new cases per day, based on estimates extrapolated from Hong Kong's own outbreak this year.

Hospitals and healthcare workers are facing "ever - unprecedented challenges", according to the Dongguan Health Commission report. It said that last week more than 2,500 healthcare workers from the city went to work with confirmed Covid infections or high fevers.