By Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis on ours),
China’s health authorities have said this winter’s flu season is lighter than it was a year earlier, but medical experts are questioning the transparency of the respiratory disease situation.
Residents of four different cities, speaking to The Epoch Times, have expressed concern about the rise in respiratory infections in their families and communities.
Some suspected that their flu-like symptoms could actually be caused by COVID-19, fearing that doctors were told to avoid such diagnoses, given that authorities declared victory in the fight against the pandemic almost two years ago.
In Shenyang, northern China, a woman named Xu said she has noticed that more people with respiratory illnesses have seen local hospitals repackaged during the New Year’s holiday of the month.
“I feel bad about myself and haven’t recovered. The hospital said I contracted influenza A, but I believe it’s just COVID-19,” Xu told The Epoch Times on Feb. 7. She expressed concern about how quickly the virus is spreading among people this time, saying her son, son-in-law and their school-age daughter have all fallen ill. “Authorities are hiding the scale of the outbreak.”
The topic of the flu was questioned
China’s top health authority has acknowledged that the country is grappling with a surge in respiratory infectious diseases, but said the flu incidence has shown signs of slowing down.
At the regime’s latest briefing, officials from the National Health Commission (NHC) reiterated their earlier assessment, saying the extent and intensity of the spread of respiratory infectious diseases is lower this year than last winter season.
“No new infectious disease has been discovered,” NHC spokeswoman Mi Feng told reporters on Jan. 17 ahead of the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, attributing the current infections to a combination of known microbes, most prominently the flu. No data were provided at the briefing.
It remains unclear how many people contracted the flu virus or COVID-19 this year. According to a monthly report by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the latest figures showed 112 COVID-19 infections and seven deaths in December 2024. As of December 2022, after a leaked recording of the NHC’s internal meeting showing that the COVID outbreaks were far worse than official data showed, the top health regulator stopped publishing daily COVID numbers and transferred COVID-related updates to its division, the CDC.
In a separate report, the CDC reported 1.5 million flu cases last December, leading to seven deaths.
Medical experts have questioned the accuracy of these flu statistics.
“It is clear that there is too little reporting of mortality,” Sean Lin, a virologist and former laboratory director of the viral disease branch of the Walter Reed Army Research Institute in the U.S., told The Epoch Times newspaper.
Official talk means that for every 100,000 people who contracted the flu in China, only one has died, which contrasts to the much more serious rates observed in the United States, where, according to Lin’s analysis, 5 to 10 people are out of 10,000 fatalities.
“Given China’s [high] level of air pollution and the high number of smokers, the number of people with respiratory illnesses in China should be significant, so the number of deaths from the flu is likely to be much higher than reported,” Lin said.
Dong Yuhong, a doctor who specializes in infectious diseases, also expressed concern about the lack of detailed data, calling them essential to prevent potential pandemics.
Dong recalled that during earlier COVID-19 outbreaks, there was often a noticeable gap between official numbers and accounts of frontline workers, crematorium workers and on-site residents.
The Chinese regime has drawn widespread criticism for withholding COVID-related information. The check goes back almost to the beginning of the pandemic, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. At the time, the regime concealed the true scale of the outbreak and silenced whistleblowers, allowing regional outbreaks to evolve into a global pandemic.
Without reliable health statistics, the international community would be ignorant of the real situation in China, according to Dong.
“Actual statistics are crucial to preventing an epidemic. They will help us understand the scale of the outbreak and assess the effectiveness of our response measures,” Dong told The Epoch Times.
Public concerns
Chinese citizens do not seem to be convinced by Beijing’s optimism about this winter sick season, with some appearing to be wary of the current situation.
A man who works at the Guangdong Industrial Center said he didn’t travel back home for China’s New Year, the country’s most important festival, which fell on Jan. 29 this year. He cited concerns about outbreaks in his hometown of Xuchang, more than 800 miles away, where he heard the situation was “serious.”
“It’s still caused by COVID-19,” a man with the surname Shao told The Epoch Times on Feb. 5. “The hospitals are full … many died recently and the crematorium is busy.” Shao complained that he missed his uncle’s funeral that day. His uncle had been healthy, and Shao said he became weak after receiving a domestic COVID-19 vaccine two years ago and eventually succumbed to “white lung” pneumonia.
Shao’s sentiment was echoed by a Beijing dance teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing consequences. He painted a grim picture of this year’s flu season, describing it as “very serious” as many of his students have fallen ill and shown flu-like symptoms. The diagnoses mainly referred to influenza A or HMPV, a type of flu that recently attracted worldwide attention, even though “privately, everyone said it was COVID-19,” he said.
The teacher recalled his relative, a young man who died just a few days after contracting the flu. He said he couldn’t help but suspect that the domestic COVID-19 vaccine played a role given his past good health and lack of underlying diseases.
In the central province of Anhui, a middle-aged father said his child and mother also became ill, and in his city he heard that many of the infected were seriously ill.
“They say it’s just the flu,” a man who refused to name himself for fear of retaliation told The Epoch Times, “but after taking [flu] medications, their symptoms haven’t improved at all.”
He said he speculated that a “new virus” was circulating, but heard that others linked it to a mutated variant of COVID. Nevertheless, “all these news [reports] were hidden,” he said.
Mr Ya and Mr Bin contributed to this report.
