Satellite images taken in several Chinese cities have captured crowds at crematoriums and funeral homes as the country continues its battle with an unprecedented wave of Covid-19 infections after the dismantling of severe pandemic restrictions.
The images, taken by Maxar in late December and early January, show a funeral home on the outskirts of Beijing which appears to have built a new parking lot, as well as queues of vehicles waiting outside funeral homes in Kunming, Nanjing, Chengdu, Tangshan and Huzhou.
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China recently loosened its strict Covid-zero approach to the virus, which has sparked mass unrest after more than two years of tight controls on citizens’ personal lives.
China’s strict policy has protected its population from the kind of mass deaths seen in Western nations – a contrast repeatedly emphasized by the Communist Party to illustrate the supposed superiority of its restrictions.
In Beijing, makeshift facilities are used to store the dead as overworked officials try to keep up with the volume of crates containing yellow body bags, and families report waiting days to bury or cremate their loved ones.
Meanwhile, the official death toll from Covid-19 in China since it eased restrictions remains surprisingly low – with just 37 deaths recorded since Dec.
The country only lists Covid patients who succumbed to respiratory failure as having died of Covid, a criterion the World Health Organization (WHO) has criticized as “rather narrow”.
As reports of overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes emerge, China faces accusations from the WHO and the US that it is underrepresenting the severity of its current outbreak, with top global health officials urging Beijing to share more data on the explosive spread. .
“We continue to call on China for faster, more regular and reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths, as well as more comprehensive and real-time viral sequencing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva on last week.
“WHO is concerned about the threat to life in China and has reiterated the importance of vaccination, including booster shots, to protect against hospitalization, serious illness and death,” he said.
Speaking in more detail, WHO executive director for health emergencies Mike Ryan said the figures released by China “underrepresent the true impact of the disease” in terms of hospital and ICU admissions, as well as deaths.
He acknowledged that many countries have seen delays in reporting hospital data, but pointed to China’s definition of death from Covid as part of the problem.
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