Covid spreading rapidly in China, new signs suggest

Since China abandoned its restrictive “zero-Covid” policy about two weeks ago, the intensity and magnitude of the country’s first nationwide outbreak has remained largely a mystery.

Now, a picture is emerging of the virus spreading like wildfire.

One province and three cities have reported Covid-19 estimates far exceeding official tallies in recent days. At a news conference Sunday, an official in Zhejiang province, home to 65 million people, estimated that daily Covid cases there had exceeded 1 million.

In the eastern city of Qingdao, population 10 million, a health minister said Friday that there were roughly half a million new cases each day, a number he expected would rise sharply in the coming days, local news sites reported.

In Dongguan, a city of 7 million in central Guangdong province, a city health commission report Friday estimated between 250,000 and 300,000 new cases daily.

Read | China's Covid-19 surge raises odds of new coronavirus mutant

And in northwestern Shaanxi province, officials in Yulin, a city of roughly 3.6 million people, logged 157,000 infected Friday, with models estimating that more than one-third of the city’s population had already been infected, according to local media.

These numbers contrast sharply with those from China’s national health commission, which Friday reported about 4,000 Covid cases for the entire country.

China has acknowledged only seven deaths from Covid in the past two weeks and a few thousand new cases daily, which health experts call a vast undercount.

On Sunday, China’s national health commission announced without explanation that it would no longer provide daily Covid data. The Chinese Center for Disease Control will provide that information, the commission said, without specifying how often.

Hospitals and health care workers are facing “never-before-seen challenges,” according to the report from the Dongguan health commission. It said that last week more than 2,500 of the city’s health workers went to work with either confirmed Covid infections or high fevers. At one Dongguan hospital, roughly half of the 3,000 health workers had been infected, according to the report.

In Qingdao, makeshift medical sites were rationing health packages consisting of 10 ibuprofen tablets and two rapid antigen tests per person, according to local news media reports.

China’s outbreak is straining not only its government’s credibility and its health care system, but also the ability to provide basic fever-reducing medications. In Yulin, authorities ordered pharmacies to ration ibuprofen and other fever-reducing medication and allowed customers to buy no more than a three-day supply.