China’s Top Health Agency Stops Publishing Daily COVID Data After Leaked Memo Shows Hundreds of Millions of Cases

People receive medical attention in a Fever Clinic area in a Hospital in the Changning district in Shanghai on Dec. 23, 2022. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

China’s National Health Commission (NHC) will no longer publish daily COVID-19 cases or death numbers after leaked data showed hundreds of millions of people nationwide were thought to have contracted the virus in December.

“From today, we will no longer publish daily information on the epidemic,” the health commission said in a brief Sunday statement, after having released daily COVID-19 updates over the past three years since the early outbreak in 2020.