China's daily coronavirus updates have become both irrelevant and misleading

My latest thought of the day on China: China’s daily Coronavirus updates have become both irrelevant and misleading since the authorities dropped mandatory mass testing and allowed self-test and self-isolation at home. The city of Beijing reported 784 local cases and 877 asymptomatic ones for yesterday. On the national level, only 2270 confirmed cases and 8447 asymptomatic cases were reported. All these figures are perhaps a tiny faction of the real numbers.

People who self-tested at home are very unlikely to report and the government doesn’t have any easy to use reporting mechanism.

A better option is to provide detailed daily updates on vaccination at central and local levels as a way to encourage people to take booster jabs.

P.S. One friend has written to suggest that the government’s daily updates should include a tally of hospitalization of severe cases and ICU occupancy vs total available hospital and ICU beds, which can be an another useful indicator.