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Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with COVID-19 on a single day this week, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing estimates from the government’s top health authority.
About 248 million people, which is nearly 18 percent of the population, are likely to have contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December, the report said, citing minutes from an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission held on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, British-based health data firm Airfinity estimated that infections in China were likely to be more than a million a day with deaths at more than 5,000 a day, a “stark contrast” from official data.
China is expecting a peak in COVID-19 infections within a week, a health official said, with authorities predicting extra strain on the country’s health system even as they downplay the disease’s severity and continue to report no new deaths.
In the face of a surging outbreak and widespread protests against its “zero-COVID” regime of lockdowns and testing, China began dismantling it this month, becoming the last major country to move toward living with the virus.
Its containment measures had slowed the economy to its lowest growth rate in nearly half a century, jamming global supply chains and trade. As Chinese workers increasingly fall ill, more disruption is expected in the short term before the economy bounces back later next year.
China reported less than 4,000 new symptomatic local COVID-19 cases nationwide for Dec. 22, and no new COVID-19 deaths for a third consecutive day.
