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Multiple reports have stated that 250 million people in China may have contracted Covid-19 during the first 20 days of December, based on an internal estimate from the nation's top health officials.
Bloomberg News and the Financial Times reported on Friday that if the estimates are accurate, it will become the largest Covid-19 outbreak ever recorded worldwide and affect approximately 18 percent of China's 1.4 billion people.
The figures were said to have been presented on Wednesday at an internal meeting of the National Health Commission (NHC), according to the reports.
The numbers contrast sharply with the NHC's public data, which only revealed 62,592 symptomatic Covid cases in the first twenty days of December. On Friday, a copy of the notes from the NHC meeting was shared on Chinese social media. However, it was impossible to verify the document's authenticity.
China recorded 37 million Covid infections on Tuesday alone, according to the report. The official number of 3,049 new infections reported that day was not in line with the figure, however.
In the meantime, the National Heartland Center (NHC) stopped publishing daily Covid-19 data on Sunday due to concerns regarding their reliability. This was due to the fact that infections have increased dramatically as a result of the sudden relaxation of stringent restrictions.
"Pertinent Coronavirus data will be distributed by the Chinese Place for Infectious prevention and Counteraction for reference and exploration," the commission said in an explanation, without determining the purposes behind the change or how oftentimes China CDC will refresh Coronavirus data.
Before stopping the release of the data, the NHC had reported no COVID deaths nationwide for four consecutive days, despite the record number of infections. This month, it only reported eight Covid deaths.
Experts in global health are puzzled by China's decision to limit the definition of COVID deaths to those caused by pneumonia or respiratory failure. Infections can now be detected using rapid antigen tests in China, and positive results are not required to be reported.
As a result of rising infections that appear to be causing backlogs at crematoriums and funeral homes and emptied pharmacy shelves and filled hospital wards, cities across the nation have struggled to cope.
Last week, reports stated that China is likely experiencing the largest outbreak the world has ever seen, with 1 million Covid infections and 5,000 virus deaths per day.
According to the report, the number of daily new cases could reach 3.7 million by the end of the month and alarmingly 4.2 million by March.
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