‘Half a million cases a day’: China censors official’s report on Covid horror in this city

In a rare admission of the global Coronavirus scare, a Chinese health official claimed that every day, 500,000 people in the eastern city of Qingdao are infected with the virus. The numbers are in stark contrast to the official figures, which China reported for the fourth day in a row as zero deaths and a few hundred cases.
 
The municipal health chief in Qingdao was quoted as saying that the eastern city was experiencing "between 490,000 and 530,000" new Covid cases every day by a news outlet run by the Communist Party, according to the Associated Press.
 
According to health official Bo Tao, the coastal city of about 10 million people was "in a period of rapid transmission ahead of an approaching peak," and the infection rate would increase by another 10% over the weekend. Several other news organisations shared the report, but by Saturday morning it seemed to have been changed to remove the case numbers.
 
Only 31 new domestic cases were reported by the authorities in Shandong, the province where Qingdao is situated, showing that official statistics are no longer a reliable source of Covid data since China stopped mass testing and abandoned its zero-Covid policy.
 
In a swift reversal of its venerable containment strategy, China quickly dismantled key pillars of its zero-Covid strategy, eliminating snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines, and travel restrictions in a swift reversal of its signature containment strategy.
 
Rising infection rates have left pharmacy shelves empty, hospital wards full, and it appears that crematoriums and funeral homes are experiencing backlogs as cities across the nation struggle to keep up.
 
However, the elimination of stringent testing requirements has made it nearly impossible to track caseloads, and authorities have narrowed the definition of a Covid death, a move that experts say will reduce the number of fatalities linked to the virus.
 
President Xi Jinping's administration in China maintains strict control over the nation's media, with hordes of online censors on hand to remove any material deemed to be politically sensitive.

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