Beijing Under Partial Lock Down As Virus Death Toll Tops 900; More Than 40,000 Infected

Via ZeroHedge

Summary:

• Virus death toll hits 902, vastly surpassing all of  SARS (813) in only three weeks
• The number of global confirmed cases hits 40,553 in China (40,171) and offshore (382)
• WHO Director-General warns “we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg”
• Exiled Chinese billionaire says true death toll closer to 50k, 1.5 million infected
• New cases confirmed in UK, Spain, Singapore
• Passengers aboard ‘Diamond Princess’ warn authorities aren’t doing enough to protect them – and others
• Officials in Shenzen say they won’t block Foxxconn factory reopening
• Cruise ship quarantined in Hong Kong allowed to leave after 4 days

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Update (2240ET): And so the epidemic reaches China’s capital Beijing. As gnews reports, as the coronavirus spreads from Wuhan, China has been implementing “closed management” by putting 80 cities under lockdown, and on Monday, Beijing authorities also issued a “Strict Closed Management of Residential Communities” in an epidemic prevention and control announcement (link here). It is an official declaration that Beijing, the country’s capital city of China, is now under lockdown.

According to the notice, Beijing will further enforce “community closed management” in a strict manner. Outside vehicles and personnel are not allowed to enter the city. People arriving in Beijing must also report their health status and complete the registration of personal information.

Those, who have left the epidemic area or have physical contact with persons in the epidemic area within 14 days of their arrival at Beijing, shall be inspected or quarantined at home in accordance with the regulations. They should take the initiative to report their health conditions, and cooperate with relevant management services. They shall not go out. Anyone who refuses to accept epidemic prevention measures such as medical observation and home quarantine constitutes a violation of public security management and shall be severely punished by the public security bureau according to the law.

In addition, all public places in the Beijing community that are not essential for people’s living are closed. All agencies and enterprises must strictly strengthen body temperature monitoring. Housing agencies and landlords in Beijing must provide local government with information on rental houses and tenants. This is a measure for epidemic prevention.

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Update (1900ET): The latest official “numbers” from China’s National Health Commission are out and they confirm that after a modest slowdown in the past few days, the number of new cases has once again rebounded.

Here’s what we know: the total number of mainland cases has risen from 37,198 to 40,171, with 97 new deaths overnight, the most yet in one day, bringing the total death tally in China to 908.

And, as has been the case for the past weeks, the number of cases remains within spitting distance of 3,000, rising from yesterday’s 2,652 to 2,973, however this number is largely irrelevant: as Dr. Scott Gottlieb   the increase in the number of confirmed cases is likely a function of China’s “testing reporting capacity”, which is roughly 3,000 per day . This means that every suspected case eventually becomes a confirmed cases, and only logistics limit how many new cases are actually being added any given day. As such, any change in the number of new cases is not only irrelevant but misleading for all those who actually trade on this as an indicator of whether the Coronavirus has peaked.

As for the now utterly meaningless death rate, one only wonders what goalseek model China is using ot keep the death rate within +/- 0.1% of 2.1% for the past two weeks.

And here we get into the part where China openly fabricates numbers. First, as discussed several days ago, the number of people receiving medial attention unexpectedly peaked at just under 190,000 after increasing by about 15,000-20,000 daily until then, in a truly mysterious “kink” on the chart below.

And finally, in the latest entrant to the “goalseeked” race, we have the number of suspects coronavirus cases, which after rising consistently by about 1,000-2,000 for the past two weeks, suddenly collapsed by over 5,000 overnight, resulting in a sharp drop in the total number of suspects cases from 28,942 to 23,589. On the surface this would be great, the only problem is that this violates virtually every aspect of viral epidemiology, and if anything only confirms how aggressively China is now fudging the data.

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