According to a local health official in Henan, China’s third-most populous province, approximately 90% of the population, or 88.5 million out of a total of 99.4 million people, have been infected with COVID-19. The official, Kan Quancheng, did not provide a timeline for when these infections occurred, but it is thought that cases may have risen in the past three weeks after China relaxed its stringent COVID-19 restrictions, leading to a surge in cases. Fever clinic visits in the province reached their peak on December 19, but have shown a continuous downward trend since then. These figures contrast with the data provided by the central government in Beijing, which states that only 120,000 people in the country of 1.4 billion have been infected and 30 have died since the shift in COVID-19 policy. Some countries and the World Health Organization have expressed doubt about the accuracy of China’s official figures, with the WHO suggesting that the country may even be “under-reporting” the severity of COVID-19 cases.
