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As cases explode, China’s low Covid death toll convinces no one


Funeral hearses carrying black and yellow mourning flowers crept through the steady stream of people toward Dongjiao crematorium in eastern Beijing. Several dozen people crowded around the closed gate waiting to get in. A man who couldn’t win a place in line could only watch, wondering what to do with the body of a loved one who had just died from Covid.

The hospital couldn’t keep the bodies – there were too many people in the morgue. When he called the crematorium, an employee told him he had to wait a week. When he called back, no one answered.

A country struggling to mourn those who have died from the explosive Covid outbreak is grappling with a system that is not prepared for a surge in deaths. Two weeks after China abruptly abandoned its “no Covid” policy, cases have skyrocketed in cities like Beijing, along with reports of deaths.

Funeral home directors and funeral supplies sellers describe a series of phone calls from families needing help disposing of a loved one’s body. On Chinese social media, people are sharing videos and photos of morgues packed with bodies, as well as their own accounts of losing loved ones to the epidemic.

But the Chinese government is painting a less dire picture. In its propaganda reports and official statistics, China has only admitted seven Covid deaths in the past two weeks and only in Beijing. The National Health Commission even reduced the country’s cumulative Covid death by one on Wednesday, to 5,241. Officials have explained that China will only count Covid deaths if the virus is a direct cause of respiratory failure – a definition that the World Health Organization says would lead to an outbreak underestimate.

The ruling Communist Party may have a political motive to downplay the damage of the epidemic has suddenly stopped trying to control. Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has described his country’s earlier success in limiting Covid deaths as proof of China’s superiority over the West, a The claim is difficult to maintain with the high number of deaths.

Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics at the Jamestown Foundation, a research group, said: “If they release the death toll, it will be a major blow to the party’s credibility.

However, international doctors and health experts say that underestimating the fees risks fueling public complacency about the risks of the virus. Chinese commentators and the public have widely criticized the death toll, saying it disturbs the picture of reality and damages the government’s credibility.

Mei Xinyu, an economist at a research institute affiliated with the Ministry of Commerce, wrote: “This is an example of ‘believing one’s own lies’. on his social media page, commenting on a daily report on Covid figures released by the government. He post later An announcement that the father-in-law of a prominent economist had died of pneumonia caused by Covid. The man’s family, he wrote, waited for hours for an ambulance to arrive and take him to the hospital.

“In the end, he could only be left on the hospital morgue floor, waiting to be cremated,” Mei wrote. He said the family is having a hard time finding a crematorium and renting a hearse. “Family members are heartbroken.”

As is the case elsewhere, the number of deaths in China tends to increase in winter, due to an increase in influenza and other respiratory infections, even during normal times. But those who work in the funeral service say they noticed a larger-than-usual increase. At the Yong’an funeral service business in Shijiazhuang, a city about 200 miles southwest of Beijing, an employee said he used to handle 10 deaths a month but now receives about 5 calls per day.

Several Chinese media reports have acknowledged a number of Covid-related deaths. Wang Ruoji, 37 years old Retired star, died after a Covid infection exacerbated the underlying condition. Caixin, a reputable newspaper, wrote that Zhou Zhichun, a former senior editor of a Communist Party newspaper, passed away at the age of 77 after contracting Covid, with his doctors sorting out the cause. multiplier is due sudden cardiac death.

But on social media, users have shared the official obituaries of several other celebrities who have passed away in recent days, including an opera singer and an artist who helped design sports mascots. . Many speculated that the real cause of these deaths was masked by descriptions such as “severe colds”.

At a government press conference on Tuesday, Wang Guiqiang, an infectious disease expert, said China only counted those who died from pneumonia or respiratory failure caused by Covid in the official number. He said fatal pneumonia cases are less frequent because the now-common variant of Omicron mainly infects the upper respiratory tract.

Another official explained why China revised its Covid death toll to one this week. Yao Xiujun, a publicity official at the Beijing Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission, said in a phone interview, a review of experts determined that one death The death reported Tuesday was one who died of other illnesses.

China’s restrictive definition excludes deaths of people with underlying diseases exacerbated by Covid. The deaths in China have also only been attributed to Covid-19 by expert panels convened by hospitals, potentially excluding those who died at home or elsewhere.

In contrast, the US, UK and Hong Kong tend to include people who have died of Covid, and not just because of it, to varying degrees.

China may not be alone in its approach. As the Russian government is still publishing the Covid death toll, it says it only counts deaths that are confirmed to be directly caused by the virus. It stopped reporting Covid deaths in October.

On Wednesday, Michael Ryan, head of medical emergencies at the World Health Organization, said China’s definition was inadequate. “It’s pretty much focused on respiratory failure – people who die from Covid die from various systemic failures due to the severity of the infection,” he said.

China’s method “would greatly underestimate the true number of deaths related to Covid,” he said.

Such a low rating has its advantages, say medical experts. It can limit public panic and reduce the burden on hospitals for people who are not seriously ill. China has struggled to keep up with supplies of ibuprofen and other fever-reducing medicines as people rush to stock up on them.

The undervaluation could also help businesses at a time when the government is trying to rescue an economy battered by nearly three years of sudden shutdowns and costly testing programs. In some major cities, companies and officials are encouraging people to go to work even if they are mildly ill with Covid.

But undercounting could also backfire by undermining government efforts to urge the public to take the necessary precautions. Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, said many elderly people in China may continue to shy away from vaccinations and young people may take the virus less seriously than they should.

Professor Jin said China has for decades recorded deaths from narrow range of infectious diseases, including 2003 SARS and seasonal flu. It made an exception during the blockade of Shanghai this spring, using a looser definition as authorities sought to justify what became a two-year blockade. month.

Of the 588 Covid-19 deaths reported by the Shanghai municipal government, one was attributed to a heart attack and the rest to “underlying conditions” or “tumors.” Despite this inconsistency, the National Health Commission has never removed those deaths from the national data.

Regardless of what the official numbers describe, China is facing a wave of deaths.

Wang Guangfa, a respiratory specialist at Peking University No. 1 Hospital, said: “Although the overall case fatality rate is low, the number of infected people is very large, so this could make the number of people sicker. The absolute mortality caused by this risk is relatively large.” an interview.

For now, the tension is fueling public frustration.

“The funeral homes are packed with people,” said one Beijing resident, giving only his last name, Chen, for fear of retribution by the authorities. Ms. Chen said that her grandfather died on Tuesday from complications of Covid, including pneumonia and kidney failure, after being in a coma for a week.

It took two days for Ms. Chen’s family to find a funeral home in Beijing to cremate her grandfather’s body. Ms. Chen also expressed skepticism towards the government’s Covid statistics.

“If only five people died of Covid in a day, I would have known almost half of them,” she said. “It is heartbreaking that we Beijingers have to suffer the first impact of the massive spread of the virus.”

Li You, Claire Fu and John Liu contribute reports and research.

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