Chinese officials estimate about 18% of the population were infected with COVID-19 in the first 20 days of December, as Beijing abruptly dismantled restrictions that had contained the disease for almost three years.
The estimates — including 37 million people, or 2.6% of the population, who were infected on Tuesday alone — were revealed by Sun Yang, a deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sun said the rate of COVID-19’s spread in the country was still rising and estimated that more than half of the population in Beijing and Sichuan were already infected, the people briefed on the meeting said.
The figures, which were provided in a closed-door meeting, contrast with data put out by the National Health Commission (NHC), which reported 62,592 symptomatic COVID-19 cases over the same period.
Last week, China stopped publicly trying to tally the total number of infections after authorities curtailed COVID-19 testing. The NHC reported just 4,103 new local cases on Saturday for the day prior, with no COVID-19-related deaths for a second consecutive day. Hong Kong, by contrast, reported 20,460 new local cases on Saturday for the previous 24 hours.
“Most Chinese cities could recover from the first wave of the latest COVID-19 outbreak by January... this would be faster than people have expected,” noted Chaoping Zhu, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
There has been a widening gulf between the official numbers and anecdotal evidence of spiraling infections on the ground.
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