“Impossible” To Track: China’s Covid Numbers No Longer Reflect Reality

Beijing:

China’s top health body said on Wednesday that the true scale of coronavirus infections in the country is now “impossible” to track, after the government abruptly abandoned its zero-Covid policy last week as Beijing officials warned cases were rising rapidly. Huh.

After nearly three years of trying to eradicate the virus, the sudden end of massive testing and quarantines has resulted in a corresponding drop in officially reported infections, which only hit an all-time high last month.

With testing no longer required in most parts of the country, China’s National Health Commission acknowledged on Wednesday that its numbers no longer reflect reality.

“Many asymptomatic people are no longer participating in nucleic acid testing, so it is impossible to accurately determine the true number of asymptomatic infected people,” the NHC said in a statement.

The statement came after Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said the capital’s new infections were “rising rapidly”, according to state media.

Beijing’s tourism authority said Tuesday it would resume tour groups in and out of the capital, with Chinese leaders determined to push ahead with the opening.

But the country is facing a surge in cases that experts fear it is ill-equipped to manage, with millions of vulnerable elderly people still not fully vaccinated and hospitals scrambling to cope with an expected influx of infected patients. There is paucity of resources.

Around 50 people queued outside the Puren Fever Clinic in Beijing on Wednesday, with several residents telling AFP they were infected with Covid.

“Basically, if we’re here in line, we’re all infected. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have come here,” a man waiting in line told AFP.

“I am here with a senior member of my family, he is having continuous fever for about 10 days, so we are coming to check him up.”

drug shortage

Restaurants, shops and parks have now been allowed to reopen, but residents aren’t finding it any easier to live with the virus.

Many people with symptoms have opted to self-medicate at home, while others are staying to protect themselves from becoming infected.

And businesses are struggling as COVID-19 rips through the population and affects their employees.

As a result, the streets of Beijing are largely empty.

Residents have complained of cold medicines selling out and long lines at pharmacies, while Chinese search giant Baidu said searches for fever-reducing ibuprofen were up 430 percent in the past week.

Rapid antigen tests and rising demand for the drugs have created a black market with astronomical prices, while buyers resort to getting the goods from “dealers” whose contacts are being circulated around WeChat groups.

Local Beijing News reported on Tuesday that market regulators are cracking down on a business in Beijing with a fine of 300,000 yuan ($43,000).

And in a major change for a country where infection with the virus was once taboo and recovered patients faced discrimination, people took to social media to show off their test results and detail their experience when they got sick. are taking

“When my body temperature exceeded 37.2 degrees, I started adding some sugar and salt to my lemonade,” wrote Beijing-based Xiaohongshu social site user “nina” on an account that hasn’t yet been infected as advice to the people.

“I am resurrected!!” Another account owner wrote in the caption of the photo showing a row of five positive antigen tests and one negative.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)