Local health officials say, nearly 90% of people in Henan, China’s third most populous province, are now infected with Covid.
Kan Quancheng, a provincial official, revealed the figure, which amounts to approximately 88.5 million people, at a press conference.
After abandoning zero-Covid policies in December, China is dealing with an unprecedented surge in cases.
The move came in response to rare protests against lockdowns, quarantines, and mass testing.
Mr Kan did not provide a timeline for when all of the infections occurred, but given that China’s previous zero-Covid policy kept cases to a minimum, the vast majority of Henan’s infections are likely to have occurred in the last few weeks.
He said visits to fever clinics in Henan province peaked on 19 December “after which it showed a continuous downward trend”.
The Henan provincial figures are in stark contrast to Covid figures from the central government
According to official data, just 120,000 people in the country of 1.4 billion have been infected and 30 died since the shift in Covid policy.
Meanwhile on Sunday, authorities reported three Covid deaths in mainland China, one more than the day before.
However, with the definition of Covid deaths narrowed and mass testing no longer compulsory, government data is no longer reflective of the true scale of the outbreak.
Other local and provincial officials have also been providing very different data to that from the central government. On Christmas Eve, a senior health official in the port city of Qingdao reported that half a million people were being infected each day. Those case figures were swiftly removed from news reports.
Meanwhile Chinese health officials said they would not include Pfizer’s antiviral Covid medicine Paxlovid in its basic medical insurance schemes as a result of the high price quoted by the US firm.
The drug, temporarily covered by China’s broad healthcare insurance scheme until 31 March, has seen a sharp increase in demand since China’s Covid cases surged last month.
Pfizer would continue to collaborate with the Chinese government and all relevant stakeholders to “secure and adequate supply” of the medicine in China, the company said in a statement.
On Sunday, Beijing also lifted mandatory quarantine for all international arrivals and opened its border with Hong Kong.
In the first wave of pre-holiday travel, official data showed that 34.7 million people travelled domestically on Saturday. This represented an increase of more than a third compared to last year, according to state media.
Infections are expected to soar as the country celebrates Lunar New Year later this month, with millions expected to travel from big cities to visit older relatives in the countryside.
Overall, more than two billion individual journeys are expected to take place, officials have said.