China's Disappearing Data Stokes Fears of Hidden Covid Wave

Edward White in Seoul and Qianer Liu in Hong Kong, reporting for Financial Times: China is under-reporting coronavirus cases and fatalities, obscuring the scale and severity of the health crisis just as the world's most populous country enters its deadliest phase of the pandemic, analysts warn. Official statistics on Friday revealed no new deaths and only 16,363 locally transmitted coronavirus cases in China, less than half the peak caseload reported last month. That is despite a stunning U-turn over the past week to relax President Xi Jinping's heavy-handed pandemic controls, which means the virus is certain to spread. The sweeping changes to Xi's zero-Covid policy allow asymptomatic or mild cases to isolate at home rather than in centralised quarantine, and slashed China's mass testing and contact tracing requirements. The sudden reversal came weeks after Covid-19 cases hit a record high of more than 40,000 a day, with every region of the country reporting an Omicron outbreak. Despite the official numbers suggesting the caseload had halved, Raymond Yeung, China economist at ANZ bank, said that on-the-ground observations indicated some cities, including Baoding, in the northern province of Hebei, already had "high infection numbers." More big cities, he said, would soon endure similar levels of infections. "Like Hong Kong, the actual infection data will no longer be informative. As the 'official' infection figures decline, the government can eventually claim their successagainst the virus," Yeung said.

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