China likely recording 1 million COVID infections & 5,000 deaths per day: Report

Officially, China recorded 2,966 new cases on Wednesday, and less than 10 Covid fatalities have occurred since the start of December. Contrast that, however, with an increasing number of stories claiming that hospitals are overrun with patients and crematoriums are operating at or near full.

China has essentially stopped operating its extensive network of mass-testing booths and abandoned attempts to count every illness on a daily basis, allowing locals to depend on quick tests with no requirement to report the findings.

The nation's health authorities also covertly changed the definition of a Covid death to one that is considerably more selective than what is used in many Western countries, making it harder to estimate the true cost of the current outbreak of illnesses.

According to Louise Blair, head of vaccinations and epidemiology at Airfinity, "the official data is unlikely to be a true reflection of the outbreak being experienced across the country,"as a result of these modifications. "This change could downplay the extent of deaths seen in China."

As more nations have shifted their focus to accepting the virus as a way of life, it is still challenging to accurately describe the Covid situation globally. A rise in infections was caused by the development of the extremely contagious omicron strain, including in the US, which had its highest daily case count in January 2022 at approximately 1.4 million infections.