Official COVID-19 cases fall in China, but can we believe the numbers?

The China Project illustration by Derek Zheng

These are the new official numbers from China, to be taken with a huge grain of salt, especially after Caixin confirmed that asymptomatic — but still contagious! — COVID-19 patients are not being counted in official numbers in many provinces:

“Mainland China reported no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases outside the epicenter of Hubei Province for the second day running on Monday,” per Reuters.

Even Hubei Province, excluding Wuhan, “has reported [on March 6] no new cases of coronavirus over 24 hours for the first time in the outbreak,” also per Reuters.

More COVID-19 news from China:

Wuhan residents objected to a staged visit to a locked-down estate by Vice-Premier Sūn Chūnlán 孙春兰, the SCMP reports. “It’s all fake!” some residents yelled from their windows, claiming that “the management company responsible for the estate had quickly cleaned up before she came and arranged for fake volunteers to deliver groceries to its locked-down households.”

Internet users objected to an exhortation by Wáng Zhōnglín 王忠林, the top official in Wuhan, for the city’s residents to “thank the General Secretary [Xi Jinping], thank the Chinese Communist Party, heed the Party, walk with the Party, and create strong positive energy.” The China Media Project writes that the remarks “generated fury online, and were viewed by many Chinese as tasteless and disgusting.”

“Chinese authorities are scrambling to tighten controls at airports and other points of entry,” the SCMP says, as “nearly all” of the newly confirmed cases outside Wuhan are “from abroad, mostly the coronavirus hotspots of Iran, Italy and South Korea.”

“More than two dozen people have been rescued from the rubble of a multi-story building reportedly converted into a coronavirus quarantine center, after it collapsed in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian on Saturday,” the SCMP reports. Ten people were later confirmed to have died in the collapse, and a government team is investigating whether renovations to the building caused the tragedy. One source told Caixin that the owner of the building, Xinjia Hotel in Quanzhou, had “built mezzanines that were too heavy for the structure to bear.” Caixin has a photo gallery of the rubble and rescue efforts.