The Wuhan Virus has been spreading rapidly throughout the People’s Republic of China since President Xi Jinping lifted the Virus-related restrictions he’d been imposing for the last three years.
Sun Yang, a deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, presented the figures [250 million infected with the Virus since the restrictions were lifted] during a closed-door meeting of high-level officials, according to the Financial Times. The figure, which accounts for 18% of the population, includes 37 million people who were infected on Tuesday [20 Dec] alone.
Some think this outbreak also will give an indication of the “true” lethality of the Omicron variant of the Wuhan Virus, since that seems to be the prevalent version in this outbreak. After all,
In countries including the US, high levels of Omicron-fueled infections are translating into less severe disease compared with earlier waves.
But Covid-19 vaccines and prior infections have bolstered immune defenses in the US and elsewhere, public-health experts said, lowering risks of hospitalization and death as the pandemic goes on.
However, a lethality assessment based on the PRC’s outcomes would require that PRC government-published data can be believed. That government routinely downplays and conceals infection and mortality rates related to its three-years of Virus presence (along with inaccurate reporting of a host of other, unrelated, data—for instance, the nation’s economic performance).
Tracking Omicron’s impact in [the PC] will be a challenge because undercounted deaths could obscure its deadliness and blind residents to the full danger, public-health experts said. They, along with relatives of deceased patients, have said they think the government isn’t publicizing the full toll from the virus.
[The PRC’s] National Health Commission said there had been no new deaths [since 20 Dec]—and that it was retracting one of the Beijing fatalities from the official tally of Covid’s toll. No explanation was given.
The PRC’s NHC also has…altered…its definition of death by Wuhan Virus: henceforth it can only be by pneumonia or respiratory failure linked directly to the coronavirus; the presence of other factors—heart disease or any other comorbidity, even if only a co-factor, with the Virus the primary cause (by objective criteria)—mean the Virus could not possibly have been the cause of death.