Report: 37M in China Infected with COVID in a Single Day

Facts

• On Friday, a report published by Bloomberg suggested that China may have seen nearly 37M people infected with COVID in a single day this week. The report cited minutes from a meeting held on Wednesday by China's National Health Commission.
• The report said that it's likely that within the first 20 days of December, 18 percent, or roughly 248M people in the country contracted the virus. On Tuesday, when the 37M were reportedly infected, China officially reported only 3,049 infections for the country.
• The report did not cite how officials arrived at their count. China shut down all PCR testing sites early in December; the difference between the estimated infections and the official number reported has fueled concerns that the highly-transmissible virus is ripping through the country at breakneck rates since the government terminated the "zero-COVID policy."
• PRC's National Health Commission estimate reportedly showed that more than 50 percent of Sichuan province and Beijing have been infected with the virus. During the meeting, no estimate was provided for the number of deaths but the NHC head, Ma Xiaowei, did cite the nation's narrow definition of deaths caused by the virus.
• The evolving developments in the PRC may suggest that the national health system was caught off guard and was severely unprepared to handle a surge of infections following the government's abandonment of its long-standing zero-COVID policy.
• In its official count, China no longer includes asymptomatic cases statistics to significantly underestimate the scope of viral spread. When estimating deaths from COVID, the nation only includes those patients that died from pneumonia or respiratory failure; this caused concern at the World Health Organization.

Sources: Al Jazeera, U.S. News, New York Post, and Hindustan Times.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by SCMP. While businesses and manufacturers originally expected a gradual approach to the PRC easing zero-COVID, the large number of infections and call-outs comes with a silver lining. Plants in the supply chain will no longer shut down or function in a "closed-loop system." Operations are expected to return to normal in three-to-four weeks and owners can more accurately plan for the development, manufacturing, and delivery of products again.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by Reuters. Pres. Xi Jinping's abrupt and ill-advised abandonment of zero-COVID has left the public health system and the people of China scrambling and without help or resources. The country's failure to vaccinate at scale and provide adequate testing and medications has resulted in the collapse of medical infrastructure. With misinformed reporting using inadequate and misleading definitions, the global community will never fully understand the decimation happening within the PRC.