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China Residents Report New Wave of COVID-19 as Infection Rates Double
Experts say the CCP continues to underreport the scale of the outbreak, as it spreads to Hong Kong and Taiwan.
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Experts say the CCP continues to underreport the scale of the outbreak, as it spreads to Hong Kong and Taiwan.
China’s official COVID-19 infection rates doubled in April, according to the latest report from the communist regime’s health authorities. Meanwhile, since early May, Chinese citizens across the country have been reporting a new wave of respiratory infections, causing hospitals to become overcrowded again.
Experts who spoke with the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times suspect the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to cover up and downplay the true scale of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country, noting that Hong Kong and Taiwan have reported an increase in infections in recent weeks.
The May 8 report published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) acknowledged that the COVID-19 positive rate in China—excluding Hong Kong and Macau—had jumped from 7.5 percent in the first week of April to 16.2 percent from April 28 to May 4.
The China CDC’s report said that the main pathogens detected in respiratory samples of patients with influenza-like symptoms in outpatient and emergency departments of sentinel hospitals were SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, rhinovirus, and human parainfluenza virus.
Beijing’s Chaoyang District Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a notice on May 12, attributing the rising COVID-19 infections in the region to the NB.1 strain, a descendant of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron recombinant lineage XDV, which is closely related to the JN.1 subvariant, itself a descendant of BA.2.86.
XDV-related recombinant variant XBB caused a massive outbreak of COVID-19 in China from late 2022 to 2023, according to the health agency.
As of May 19, the COVID-19 infection report on the China CDC website hasn’t been updated since March, which reported 131 “severe cases” and seven deaths.
“China’s CDC has not reported the rate of severe cases, hospitalization rate, or mortality rate. Therefore, the outside world cannot know the actual situation,” Sean Lin, assistant professor at the Biomedical Science Department of Feitian College and former U.S. Army microbiologist, told The Epoch Times on May 17.
“The number of infections in mainland China has certainly increased recently, but Beijing doesn’t even report the actual number of infections, only the positive rate, which is misleading the public,” Lin said.
Multiple viruses have been causing waves of respiratory infections in China this year.
“There are three to four types of multiple overlapping infections of respiratory viruses in patients,” Lin said. “This is more than just COVID-19 infections.”
He suspects that the Chinese regime is using COVID-19 infections in the latest report to cover up “a more serious situation of this more invasive multi-infection.”
“The Chinese regime hasn’t told the public about the severity of the situation,” Lin said.
Dr. Jonathan Liu, director of Liu’s Wisdom Healing Centre, has a similar assessment.
“This wave of respiratory infection in mainland China is mainly caused by COVID-19, but it’s combined with other viruses,” he told The Epoch Times on May 17.
Many videos and posts on Chinese social media show that hospitals across China have been overcrowded with patients since China’s Labor Day holiday, which fell between May 1 and May 4.
Due to the CCP’s history of covering up information and publishing unreliable data, including the underreporting of COVID-19 infections and related deaths since early 2020, accounts from residents can offer valuable information for understanding the situation on the ground in this totalitarian country.
Chinese residents told The Epoch Times that many people around them have been infected with COVID-19 or experienced COVID-like symptoms since the holiday.
People wait at an outpatient area of the respiratory department of a hospital in Beijing on Jan. 8, 2025. Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
“I was diagnosed with COVID-19 at the hospital, and they had to report it. I suspected I was infected when I went to the emergency room,” said Xu Ling, a resident in Chaoyang District in Beijing who used a pseudonym due to fear of retaliation from the authorities.
“I am almost fully recovered, but it has taken a long time. I took cefuroxime,” Xu said, referring to an antibiotic that he said is used as “special medicine for COVID-19” in China, a claim that the publication couldn’t independently verify.
A young parent from Zibo city in China’s eastern Shandong Province, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, said he contracted the virus during the May Day holiday while visiting another city.
“Our whole family tested positive for COVID-19,” he said, although his symptoms were milder than the first time he got infected.
“I tried to tough it out for a few days, but I couldn’t,“ he said. ”I’m still coughing, so I think it’s mild pneumonia.”
Xiao Qiang, who used a pseudonym for safety concerns, said that “a lot of people have caught colds recently.”
Most of my relatives and friends have had fevers,” said the resident from Baoji city in China’s northwest Shaanxi Province.
“It seems that the symptoms are the same as those of previous waves of COVID-19,” he said. “If you see a doctor, the doctor will only say you have a cold.”
Liu said the increase in COVID-19 infections since the May Day holiday is related to many people traveling.
“Many mainland Chinese people traveled to Hong Kong, and Hong Kong residents visited mainland China, so the number of infections has increased,” he said. Hong Kong health authorities, independent from mainland China’s, reported a rise in COVID-19 infections on May 15, with 81 “severe cases” and 30 deaths. The COVID-19 positive rate jumped from 6.2 percent between April 6 and April 12 to 13.66 percent in mid-May.
The COVID-19 positive rate of respiratory samples and the viral content in sewage in Hong Kong have surpassed the highest levels recorded a year ago. Contaminated wastewater can be a significant source of viruses.
Liu said that the data in Hong Kong is relatively more realistic than the data from the mainland.
“The numbers released by China’s CDC are actually too low. For example, they reported only seven deaths in March, which is unlikely, according to the normal epidemic rate,” he said.
He compared these deaths with those reported for Canada.
“Canada reported 1,915 COVID-19 deaths in 8.5 months, so the average number of deaths per month is more than 225,“ he said, pointing out that the nation has ”a large land area and very low population density, and relatively good sanitary conditions.”
“How could there be only seven deaths in a month in mainland China? It’s hard to believe it,” he said.
COVID-19 infections in Taiwan have also significantly increased around the same time, according to reports by the island’s health authorities.
Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control on May 16 reported an average of 154 new COVID-19 cases per day between May 10 and May 16, an increase from the average of 116 new cases per day from May 3 to May 9. After Taiwan’s last COVID-19 peak in summer 2024, infections started to increase again in April, with 21 cases and seven deaths reported from April 22 to April 28.
“COVID-19 infections in Taiwan may peak in June,” said Dr. Huang Chian-Feng from the Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at National Taiwan University.
“Analysis of the virus strains has shown that they mainly came from Hong Kong and mainland China,” he told The Epoch Times on May 17.
Huang said that symptoms are “easy to ignore” because some symptoms are atypical and non-respiratory, “including those related to the gastrointestinal tract, such as stomach pain, nausea, and vomiting.”
Luo Ya, Ning Haizhong, and Hong Ning contributed to this report.
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