Public skepticism is growing in parts of China as health authorities attribute an ongoing pneumonia outbreak to influenza while downplaying COVID-19 infections.

Interviews with The Epoch Times with local Chinese found that the official rhetoric regarding the outbreak has been unconvincing, with many suspecting the infections are another round of COVID-19.

Residents in major cities such as Shanghai and Tianjin have reported severe infections in their communities, including “white lung” symptoms, which are typical in severe COVID-19 cases.

China’s National Health Commission spokesperson, Mi Feng, said on Jan. 14 that the current respiratory diseases are still mainly influenza, adding that the COVID-19 infection rate is low.

On Jan. 18, China’s National Influenza Center released its latest weekly influenza surveillance report, which found that the number of emergency department visits for respiratory infectious diseases in major hospitals has increased.

The main pathogen is the influenza virus, which will still be in the epidemic period over the next few weeks, according to the report.

However, as pointed out by medical experts, COVID-19 has never disappeared in China. In recent months, pneumonia infection cases soared across the country, exhibiting similar symptoms as COVID-19, with hospitals constantly overcrowded.

Chen Yun (pseudonym), a medical worker in the mega port city of Tianjin in north China, told The Epoch Times: “The government does not report, test, or manage the current epidemic, and does not take the epidemic as a priority at all.”

She said that currently, more people are suffering from white lung symptoms.

Mr. Zhang, also a Tianjin resident, told The Epoch Times that many people have been infected in this wave of the epidemic, many of whom are seriously ill and have developed white lungs.

“There must be some deaths from it, but the government just doesn’t report them,“ Mr. Zhang said. ”There are currently no beds available in hospitals; people have to wait in line for at least a day to get admitted.”

He said that both his parents were infected and were hospitalized a few days ago.

“It should be pneumonia; the chest X-ray looks pretty serious,” he said.

“After the doctor saw the chest X-ray, he said that the patient’s lung infection was quite serious, but the doctor didn’t say what virus he was infected with. In fact, they knew it but just didn’t say it,” he said.

“The doctor just said that they should be hospitalized for IV (intravenous ) treatment as soon as possible. There is no effective treatment in the hospital, and they are just putting them on IV treatment.”

Mr. Zhang said that the official media is simply not reporting on the mass infections as they should.

Mr. Chen, a Shanghai citizen, told The Epoch Times that it is now the fourth year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said some people around him are currently infected, and their symptoms are quite severe.

A female colleague of his, who is about 35 years old and is the mother of two children, had an infection, and half of each lung became white.

“She requested to have a chest X-ray, and the X-ray revealed the white lungs. If she hadn’t requested, the hospital wouldn’t have taken a chest X-ray for her,” Mr. Chen said.

“As for the official data, I feel there are many problems. Sometimes they say it’s influenza A, and sometimes they say it’s influenza B. I think they must be covering something up.”

Mr. Chen complained about reporting on the issue in the state-run media, adding that reports on COVID-19 infections have been mentioned but given little attention.

Mr. Chen believed the intention of such official reporting is “in the future (when the epidemic gets very serious) it will say: ‘We reported it at the beginning’. But when they made the announcement, they couldn’t say it directly and tried to downplay it. The government needs pretty data in many aspects to make it look good, so it has to fake it, and it has ways to fake the data.”

Sudden Death of Doctor Influencer

Meanwhile, the sudden death of a 46-year-old Chinese doctor who was popular on social media attracted nationwide attention after his colleagues revealed his cause of death was COVID-19.

Internet celebrity anesthesiologist Zhu Xiang suddenly passed away on Jan. 12.

Dr. Zhu had more than 100,000 followers on TikTok and he looked fine in his last video posted just a few days before his death.

His colleagues revealed his cause of death on Chinese social media with one post saying: “Zhu Xiang passed away suddenly due to acute myocarditis caused by infection with a COVID-19 mutated strain. Condolences.”

Another posted that Dr. Zhu “had to go to work even though he contracted COVID-19 and he was overworked, which caused acute myocarditis.”

State-run media all reported that Dr. Zhu died from being overworked for months, with no mention of any infections.

Fang Xiao and Xiong Bin contributed to this report.