China says COVID-19 peak has passed

Chinese authorities say the country’s wave of COVID-19 has peaked with severe cases and deaths are rapidly declining. But reports from China around the Lunar New Year period suggest that infection and death rates are higher than official reports, according to the Western press.

China’s health authorities have said the COVID wave has passed its peak, with both severe cases and hospital deaths dropping rapidly, but experts remain wary of the government’s official figures.

According to the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CDC), the number of seriously ill patients in hospitals peaked in the first week of January and then quickly dropped by more than 70%. According to the data, the number of deaths also reached its highest level this week.

Professor Chi Chonghui, director of the Center for Global Health at Oregon State University, argues that local officials have been encouraged – with “carrot and stick” – to underreport infection rates during the zero COVID policy. Now that this policy has been lifted, they have an incentive to exaggerate infection rates and underestimate death rates.

“Most international experts know this very well – China’s statistics are very unreliable,” says the US-based expert.

Cases of COVID-19 have spread across China in recent months, escalating rapidly after the government abruptly ended its zero-case COVID policy in early December 2022. A senior health official said last week that 80% of people were infected in the wave, though it was unclear where those numbers came from.

According to the data, there were 128,000 seriously ill patients with covid in Chinese hospitals as of Jan. 5, considered the highest number reached during this wave. Hospital cases are said to have peaked during the Western New Year period, with almost 10,000 new critically ill cases a day from December 27 to January 3.

It is reported that by January 23, the total number of seriously ill patients decreased by 72% and amounted to about 36 thousand people.

The number of deaths in hospitals reached its highest level on January 4, with 4,273 cases, before falling 79% by January 23 to 896.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control said visits to fever clinics peaked at 2.867 million on Dec. 23 before falling 96.2% to 110,000 on Jan. 23. A similar decline was observed in visits to rural clinics, with a peak around the same date.

The data released on Wednesday was based mostly on hospital inpatients, giving some indication of the severity of the outbreak, but outside health experts and observers warned it only showed a fraction of the true toll.

The wave of infections in China hit major cities first, and there were fears that travel for the Lunar New Year could lead to regional spread of the infection. Reports from China have already revealed apparent high infection and death rates that appear to be higher than official reports.

With the end of the “zero Covid” policy, travel restrictions, mass testing, mandatory quarantines and other measures in China have been eased or completely eliminated. Data collection systems quickly fell far behind reality on the ground, and fewer than 60 deaths were officially recorded in the first few weeks, until authorities updated how deaths were categorized.

The notice from the Chinese Center for Disease Control acknowledged that PCR testing was not effective against infections. Daily tests were down to 280,000 by Monday, down from 150 million on December 9 and 7.54 million on January 1. Some provinces have put in place systems to collect residents’ results or allow residents to self-report, but the numbers are “impacted by residents’ willingness to test.”

Previously, several provinces or major cities have reported infection rates of 70-90%, but some analysts have suggested that such numbers may have been inflated to suggest places are on the road to recovery.

Professor Antoine Flahaud, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva, told The Guardian that the figure of 80% of the total infection rate was “mostly plausible” and in line with global knowledge of the frequency of Omicron attacks: “Having said that, transfer it to death rates very difficult.”