Two Chinese cities reported daily COVID-19 cases that far surpassed the official national tally, in another illustration of the unreliability of data in a country grappling with infections after abruptly ending COVID zero.
The city of Dongguan in the southern province of Guangdong has 250,000 to 300,000 people being infected on a daily basis, the city’s health commission said on its WeChat account Friday, citing model-based estimates and expert assessments. The manufacturing hub had a population of about 10.5 million as of 2021.
Qingdao in the eastern province of Shandong is seeing 490,000 to 530,000 daily cases based on data projections, according to a local newspaper report on Friday, citing the head of the city’s health commission. COVID cases have yet to peak in the city of some 10.3 million residents, the official said.
