China said on Saturday that it had recorded nearly 60,000 coronavirus-related deaths in the month since the country Remove the strict “no Covid” policy, hastening an outbreak that is believed to have infected millions. The revelation is the first time China has given an official measure of the Covid wave currently sweeping across the country and shows that the official death toll has spiked.
As of Saturday, China has reported a total of just 5,272 Covid deaths since the pandemic began in the city of Wuhan in late 2019. That measure is narrowly defined as those deaths caused by inflammation. lung or respiratory failure caused by Covid. The new figure released on Saturday includes people who contracted Covid, but also died from other underlying illnesses.
China has faced growing criticism from other countries and from the World Health Organization for not providing reliable data on the extent of the Covid outbreak and on the number of deaths across the country. water despite the widespread epidemic. hospital overloadmorgues and funeral homes in recent weeks.
Before this announcement, China said that only 37 people had died from Covid since December 7, the day the country ended its “no Covid” policy.
The lack of transparency has led some countries, including Japan and South Korea, to impose travel restrictions on Chinese visitors after China reopens border Last Sunday. Experts also warn that downplaying the severity of the outbreak could lead people in the country to take fewer precautions.
Find out the situation in China
The Chinese government has scrapped its “no Covid” restrictive policy, which has sparked mass protests and is a rare challenge to the Communist Party’s leadership.
Jiao Yahui, an official with China’s National Health Commission, said during a press conference in Beijing, China recorded 59,938 Covid-19-related deaths between December 8 and December 12. /first. That number includes 5,503 deaths from respiratory failure directly caused by Covid. Ms. Jiao said another 54,435 of the deaths were linked to other underlying diseases.
Jiao said China could not release data on Covid-related deaths sooner because of the need to comprehensively examine hospital reports.
“We organized experts to conduct a systematic analysis of the deaths, so it took a long time,” said Ms. Jiao.
It is not clear whether the new figures mean China has changed how it revealed the death of Covid to include people with underlying conditions whose condition is made worse by the virus. Officials still insist that China’s official count only counts those who died from pneumonia or respiratory failure caused by Covid-19. Other countries, such as the US and UK, count Covid deaths more broadly.
Experts say it is too early to determine whether China will change tactics, but they welcome the move to provide more data.
Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, said: “We can’t make a verdict at the moment, but it’s clearly more reliable than previous data that said there were only a handful of deaths. death”. “I hope the government will be more transparent now.”
China has long recorded deaths from infectious diseases, including the 2003 SARS outbreak and seasonal flu. But during the Shanghai blockade in the spring of 2022, the authorities made an exception and used a looser definition to justify long-term detention of residents. Of the 588 Covid-19 deaths reported by the Shanghai municipal government at the time, one was attributed to a heart attack and the rest to “underlying conditions” or “tumors.” . Despite this contradiction, the National Health Commission has never removed those deaths from the total number of Covid deaths nationwide.
Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, said the actual death toll in China, like in every country, is almost certainly higher. He said China could have provided more reliable data on mortality and infection rates if it had tested patients in hospitals more closely.
“It is somewhat surprising that China has a lot of testing capacity but is not using it to confirm Covid in hospitalized patients,” Mr. Cowling said.
National Health Commission data confirmed longstanding concerns that China’s aging population would be hit hard by an outbreak because so many people aren’t getting enough doses of the vaccine. Of the nearly 60,000 deaths, 56.5% involved people at least 80 years old.
The death of Covid is a particularly sensitive political issue in China, because Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, has advocated a strategy of harsh lockdowns, isolation and mass testing. to try to stop the virus. Xi boasted that the model could be adopted by other countries after it proved successful in stopping transmission at the outset of the pandemic.
However, when the highly infectious variant of Omicron emerged last year, that strategy became impossible. As cases steadily increase across the country, Protests broke out in November as many people become weary of Covid restrictions. Under severe economic stress, China then abruptly reversed its “no Covid” policy without giving the country a chance to stockpile medicine.
Officials have said in recent days that infections have peaked in major cities, despite growing concern about what the current coronavirus wave will look like. affect the country’s countrysidewhere the health care system is much weaker than in Chinese cities.
