In a rare admission that official statistics do not reflect the reality of the scale of the new spread of the epidemic, a senior Chinese health official revealed that half a million covid infections are recorded daily in the city of Tsingtao alone, as reported in an article that was quickly censored.

With the growing discontent of the population, China at the beginning of this month abandoned the main pillars of the "zero covid" policy to contain the epidemic, canceled lockdown measures, examinations, quarantines and travel restrictions, all of which affect the Chinese economy.

Since then, the epidemic has broken out in China and a large part of the population has been left to fend for themselves while the markets are facing a shortage of antipyretic drugs and self-tests due to growing demand.

Cities across China are struggling to curb a spike in infections that has emptied pharmacy shelves and filled hospital rooms as well as cremation centers.

But the abolition of mandatory examinations has made it almost impossible to estimate the numbers of infections, while the authorities have changed their approach to counting deaths. The death toll now includes only people who died of respiratory failure directly related to covid-19.

Experts believe that this step is aimed at reducing the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus.

In tsingdao in the east of the country, one of the media run by the ruling Communist Party on Friday quoted the municipal health director as saying that the city in the east of the country is seeing "between 490 thousand and 530 thousand" new covid infections a day.

Bo Tao, whose statements were published in the article, said that the port city with a population of about ten million people is experiencing "a stage of rapid spread of infection before it approaches the peak". The same official added that the infection rate is expected to accelerate by another 10 percent over the weekend.

Several other media outlets carried the article, which was edited on Saturday morning to remove the numbers from it.

China's health ministry said on Saturday that 4,103 new infections were recorded on Friday across the country, but there were no deaths.

The Chinese government imposes strict restrictions on the media, with severe internet censorship to remove any politically sensitive content.

Most state media downplayed the seriousness of the new covid wave. Instead, she described the change of the "covid attribute" policy as logical and thoughtful.

There have been media reports of shortages of medicines and pressure on hospitals, but estimates of the actual number of casualties remain scarce.