China: Zhejiang’s 1 mn daily Covid cases expected to double

People register to collect medicine donated by merchants and residents at a public service centre in Tonglu, Zhejiang Friday. Pic/AFP

China's Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai, is battling around a million new daily Covid-19 infections, a number expected to double in the days ahead, the provincial government said on Sunday. Despite a record surge of cases nationwide, China reported no Covid deaths on the mainland for five days through Saturday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday.

Citizens and experts have called for more accurate data as infections surged after Beijing made sweeping changes to a zero-Covid policy that had put hundreds of millions of its citizens under relentless lockdowns and battered the world's second-largest economy. Nationwide figures from China had become incomplete as the National Health Commission stopped reporting asymptomatic infections, making it harder to track cases. On Sunday the commission stopped reporting daily figures, which the China CDC then published.

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Zhejiang is among few areas to estimate their recent spikes in infections including asymptomatic cases. Zhejiang, with a population of 65.4 million, said that among the 13,583 infections in the province's hospitals, one patient had severe symptoms caused by Covid, while 242 infections of severe and critical conditions were caused by underlying diseases.

65.4 mn
Population of Zhejiang

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