China’s CDC Reports New COVID-19 Cases Hit Nearly 20 Percent

China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that new COVID-19 infections in the country of origin have increased to nearly 20 percent in the past few weeks, as two new Omicron subvariants spread across the country. But while the rate of infection in China’s official data mirrors that of the rest of the world, the number of reported COVID-19 deaths in China remain orders of magnitude lower than is expected for a country of its population size, given the ongoing reports of COVID-19-related deaths in other countries. According to an Aug. 8 report—which was issued on the same day as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its biweekly update—China’s CDC reported that the COVID-19 positive rate for influenza-like cases in China has spiked from 8.9 percent in the first week of July to 18.7 percent in the last week of July. Official data indicate that the transmission rate has been consistently lower than 8 percent since the start of the year....