ZHEJIANG
\nChina\u2019s Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai, is battling around a million new daily Covid-19 infections, a number expected to double in the days ahead, the provincial government said on Sunday.
\nDespite a record surge of cases nationwide, China reported no Covid deaths on the mainland for the five days through Saturday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Sunday.
\nCitizens and experts have called for more accurate data as infections surged after Beijing made sweeping changes to a zero-Covid policy that had put hundreds of millions of its citizens under relentless lockdowns and battered the world\u2019s second-largest economy.
\nNationwide figures from China had become incomplete as the National Health Commission stopped reporting asymptomatic infections, making it harder to track cases.
\nOn Sunday the commission stopped reporting daily figures, which the China CDC then published.
\nZhejiang is among the few areas to estimate their recent spikes in infections including asymptomatic cases.
\n\u201cThe infection peak is estimated to arrive earlier in Zhejiang and to enter a period of elevated level around New Year\u2019s Day, during which the daily new infection number will be up to two million,\u201d the Zhejiang government said in a statement.
\nZhejiang, with a population of 65.4 million, said that among the 13,583 infections being treated in the province\u2019s hospitals, one patient had severe symptoms caused by Covid while 242 infections of severe and critical conditions were caused by underlying diseases.
\nChina narrowed its definition for reporting Covid deaths (counting only those from Covid-caused pneumonia or respiratory failure) raising eyebrows among world health experts.
\nThe World Health Organization has received no data from China on new Covid hospitalisations since Beijing eased its restrictions. The organisation says the data gap might be due to the authorities struggling to tally cases in the world\u2019s most populous country.
\n\u201cChina is entering the most dangerous weeks of the pandemic,\u201d said a research note from Capital Economics.
\n\u201cThe authorities are making almost no efforts now to slow the spread of infections and, with the migration ahead of Lunar New Year getting started, any parts of the country not currently in a major Covid wave will be soon.\u201d
\nThe cities of Qingdao and Dongguan have each estimated tens of thousands of daily Covid infections recently, much higher than the national daily toll without asymptomatic cases.
\nThe country\u2019s healthcare system has been under enormous strain, with staff being asked to work while sick and even retired medical workers in rural communities being rehired to help grass-root efforts, according to state media.
\nBolstering the urgency is the approach of the Lunar New Year in January when huge numbers of people return home.
\nVisits to Zhejiang fever clinics hit 408,400 a day (14 times normal levels) in the past week, a Zhejiang official told a news conference.
\nDaily requests to the emergency centre in Zhejiang\u2019s capital, Hangzhou, have recently more than tripled on average from last year\u2019s level, state television reported on Sunday, citing an Hangzhou health official.
\nThe eastern city of Suzhou said late on Saturday its emergency line received a record 7,233 calls on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ZHEJIANG China\u2019s Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai, is battling around a million new daily Covid-19 infections, a number expected to double in the days ahead, the provincial government said on Sunday. Despite a record surge of cases nationwide, China reported no Covid deaths on the mainland for the five days through Saturday, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303491,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-303487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n