Covid-19 in China: nearly 250 million Chinese infected in twenty days
Nearly 18% of the population would have been infected since the beginning of the month and the sudden relaxation of the epidemic prevention and control policy.
REUTERS - Alessandro Diviggiano
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
37 million Chinese were infected with Covid in a single day this week, according to an estimate by health authorities in China.
In total, nearly 18% of the population would have been infected since the beginning of the month and the sudden relaxation of the epidemic prevention and control policy.
Publicity
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With our correspondent in Beijing
,
Stéphane Lagarde
There are statistics and there is truth.
And the truth is that the emergency services of Chinese hospitals are full and that the official balance sheets no longer mean much since the abandonment of the policy of mass screening of the population.
With
images of hearses waiting outside crematoriums
on social media in recent days, health authorities have had to revise their estimates.
According to
the new count of the National
Health Commission reported by the Bloomberg agency, 248 million Chinese have contracted viral pneumonia in 20 days, an average of 12.4 million people infected per day.
Half a million cases in one city
This is a record for China (the previous record infection rate of around 4 million dating back to January 2022), but also for the provinces and regions, some of which are beginning to challenge official reports.
According to the local press, the large port city of Qingdao of 10 million inhabitants alone has 490,000 to 530,000 new cases per day, while officially 24 Covid-19 contaminations were reported Friday for the entire eastern province. from Shandong.
The article was quickly censored.
A tsunami of infections which results in the arrival of reinforcements in the most affected areas.
The provinces of Hunan, Shandong, Jiangsu and Fujian are preparing to send nurses and doctors to support
the overwhelmed intensive care units
in the Chinese capital.
► To read also: Covid-19: how China went from “zero Covid” to “full Covid”
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