China’s daily COVID-19 infections peaked at over 7 million cases with over 4000 daily deaths in hospitals

China’s daily new COVID-19 infections reached their peak of over 7 million cases per day around Dec 22, 2022 while number of deaths in hospitals reached a daily peak of 4,273 on January 4, 2023. Chinese state media quoting the latest report from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that the peak of severe illness reached nearly 10,000 cases during its highest period.

At present, millions of Chinese have gone back to their home to celebrate Chinese New Year, driving the current surge in smaller cities and rural areas. Big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc. have crossed the worst phase of current wave of infections. China has passed the peak of COVID-19 patients in fever clinics, emergency rooms and with critical conditions, a National Health Commission official said previously.

Since China removed its Zero-COVID protocols in early December 2022, over 80% of China’s 1.4 billion population has been infected with coronavirus (largely Omicron variant), many with severe symptoms putting enormous strain on hospitals. China has officially reported 73000 deaths since it abruptly and “thoughtlessly” abandoned its stringent, confusing, and highly unpopular dynamic zero COVID protocols but reportedly mortality is much higher – probably crossing a million deaths due to a narrow definition of COVID-related deaths and deaths at homes.

Since, December 8, the country has stopped mandatory mass nucleic acid testing and the overall testing volume has gradually declined from 150 million per day on December 9 to 7.54 million on January 1 and to the lowest point of 280,000 on January 23, according to the report. BA.5.2 and BF.7 are still the dominant variants in the country without finding new mutant strains, according to the report.