As COVID-19 rips through China, other countries and the World Health Organization are calling on its government to share more comprehensive data on the outbreak. Some even say many of the numbers it's reporting are meaningless, the AP reports. Of greatest concern is whether new variants will emerge from the mass infection unfolding in China and spread to other countries. Chinese health authorities publish a daily count of new cases, severe cases, and deaths, but those numbers include only officially confirmed cases and use a very narrow definition of COVID-related deaths.
China is most certainly doing their own sampling studies but just not sharing them, said Ray Yip, who founded the US Centers for Disease Control office in China. The nationwide tally for Thursday was 9,548 new cases and five deaths, but some local governments are releasing much higher estimates just for their jurisdictions. Zhejiang, a province on the east coast, said Tuesday it was seeing about 1 million new cases a day. Without basic data like the number of deaths, infections, and severe cases, governments elsewhere have instituted virus testing requirements for travelers from China. Beijing has threatened countermeasures, saying the measures aren't science-based. If a variant emerges in an outbreak, it's found through genetic sequencing of the virus.
Health officials have defended the testing as a surveillance measure that helps fill an information gap from China. This means countries can get a read on any changes in the virus through testing, even if they don’t have complete data from China. "We don’t need China to study that, all we have to do is to test all the people coming out of China,” Yip says. The current outbreak appears to have spread the fastest in densely populated cities, putting a strain on the health care system, the AP reports. Authorities are now concerned about the possible spread to smaller towns and rural areas that lack resources such as ICU beds.
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China is seeking to minimize the possibility of a major new outbreak during this month’s Lunar New Year travel rush following the end of most pandemic containment measures. The Transportation Ministry on Friday called on travelers to reduce trips and gatherings, particularly if they involve elderly people, pregnant women, small children, and those with underlying conditions. Authorities say they expect more than 2 billion trips to be made during the weeklong festival season, the most important time for visiting family and friends in the traditional Chinese calendar. (More China stories.)
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