China’s National Health Commission (NHC) has banned the release of daily numbers of coronavirus infections, amid concerns about the reliability of the data as infections exploded following the sudden easing of strict restrictions.
“Relevant information on COVID-19 will be published by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for reference and research,” the commission announced, without giving any reason for the change or how often China’s CDC will update new information about the virus.
The sudden halt in reporting the number of daily infections and deaths comes amid growing concerns about a lack of accurate information since Beijing made significant changes to the zero-Covid policy that quarantined hundreds of millions of its citizens.
Despite the record rise in infections, the NHC reported no deaths from COVID-19 nationwide for four consecutive days before it stopped publishing data.
Officially, China has reported fewer than 10 virus-related deaths in the past two weeks, but a surge in demand for crematoria has been interpreted as evidence that the actual death toll is much higher.
British health data company Airfinity estimated last week that China was experiencing more than a million infections and 5,000 deaths a day.