China Stops Counting Asymptomatic Coronavirus Cases

A woman has her routine COVID-19 throat swab at a testing site despite authorities startin
AP Photo/Andy Wong
John Hayward

Chinese health officials on Wednesday announced they would stop counting asymptomatic coronavirus cases as the omicron variant of Chinese coronavirus rips across the country.

Since many coronavirus infections are asymptomatic, this will have the convenient result of dramatically reducing the number of infections China admits to.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) quoted Chinese officials admitting a significant “discrepancy” has appeared between “actual and reported case numbers” ever since pandemic rules were relaxed to mollify huge protests in late November. One of the relaxed protocols was mandatory coronavirus testing on a mass scale.

Chinese officials claimed the current surge in coronavirus cases was partly the result of abandoning strict lockdown policies and attempting to “live with the virus,” as the rest of the world has been doing for most of 2022. 

“The coming month will be a challenging one, and protection of the elderly is key,” said Zhang Wenhong, director of infectious diseases at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai.

Zhang was alluding to the fairly low vaccination rate among Chinese elderly – only 42 percent for people over 80, according to the SCMP.  A fair number of Chinese citizens have defied their authoritarian government’s advice to get vaccinated because they do not trust the vaccines, thanks to several massive pharmaceutical scandals over the past decade.

The Chinese government has approved a number of dubious domestically produced vaccines but has not allowed the import of far more effective vaccines from abroad. The Financial Times (FT) on Wednesday quoted Chinese scientists and analysts who are urging the Communist regime to relent and allow the use of foreign vaccines that work much better against the omicron variant than Chinese products.

Some of these advisers wished to remain anonymous, fearing political reprisals, but others were quite open in stating that they believe the newer mRNA vaccine technology used in American and European vaccines is much more effective against omicron than China’s old-style inactivated-virus treatments. They also noted China’s slow approval process is lagging dangerously far behind the development of highly contagious Chinese coronavirus variants.

“The best thing for China to do would be to approve foreign-made mRNA vaccines, expand elderly vaccination rates and stockpile antivirals,” said University of Hong Kong virologist Jin Dong-yan.

Jin was also hopeful that the inhaled booster technology developed by China’s CanSino and field-tested in October would help to overcome some people’s resistance to getting shots. Chinese state media is pushing very hard to get citizens to view aerosol boosters as a pleasant experience, coupled with revised messaging that portrays the omicron variant as a relatively minor inconvenience, rather than a killer virus the rest of the world was foolish to underestimate.                                     

Another reason for Chinese vaccine hesitancy is that the government has long assured citizens that severe “zero Covid” lockdowns had the coronavirus under control, and the rest of the world was foolish for choosing to “live with it.” 

The FT noted unrest among the Chinese public as it becomes increasingly clear their government has been less than honest about the number of coronavirus infections.

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