Reports: China reports worlds largest single-day COVID infections; Details Here

TNI Bureau: According to estimates from the government’s top health authority, close to 37 million people in China may have contracted Covid-19 on a single day this week, shattering the global record and making the country’s outbreak by far the largest in the world.

According to sources from an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission conducted on Wednesday, which were validated by officials involved in the discussions, as many as 248 million people, or nearly 18% of the population, possibly infected the virus in the first 20 days of December. If true, the infection rate would far exceed the previous daily high of 4 million, which was achieved in January 2022.

The swift lifting of Covid Zero restrictions by Beijing has allowed the extremely contagious omicron forms to spread unchecked in a population with poor levels of natural immunity. According to estimates from the government, more than half of the people living in Beijing and Sichuan province in southwest China are sick.

Given that the nation’s formerly extensive network of PCR testing booths was shut down earlier this month, it is unclear how the Chinese health agency arrived at its estimate. Since home testing with uncentralized results replaced difficult-to-get laboratory tests during the pandemic, it has been challenging to determine precise infection rates in other nations.

Bloomberg News faxed a request for comment, but the NHC didn’t answer. Calls and faxes to the newly established National Disease Control Bureau of the commission, which is in charge of managing the Covid response, were unanswered on Friday as well.

The official count of merely 3,049 illnesses registered in China on December 20 is a sharp contrast to the estimated 37 million daily cases for that day. Additionally, it exceeds the previous pandemic-related world record by a significant margin.

According to data provided by Bloomberg, the number of cases worldwide peaked at 4 million on January 19, 2022, during the initial wave of omicron infections following its introduction in South Africa.