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Beijing (AFP) – China, criticized for its lack of transparency about the Covid-19 epidemic, announced on Saturday at least 60,000 virus-related deaths since the lifting of health restrictions in the country a month ago.
After three years of enforcing some of the most draconian restrictions in the world, China abruptly lifted most of its coronavirus health provisions in early December, following protests against the severity of these measures in several cities across the country.
Since then, the number of patients has increased considerably. Hospitals have been overwhelmed by infections in older adults and a large number of corpses arrive at crematoriums. Despite this, authorities have so far only reported a small number of deaths.
In December, Beijing revised its methodology for counting deaths from Covid-19 and now only people who died directly from coronavirus-related respiratory failure are included in the statistics.
This controversial change in methodology means that a large number of deaths are no longer recorded as due to Covid-19.
The World Health Organization (WHO) criticized this new Chinese definition of death from Covid-19 as “too narrow”.
First non-exhaustive balance sheet
On Saturday, the health authorities released their first non-exhaustive assessment of the epidemic since the lifting of health restrictions last month.
“A total of 59,938” deaths related to Covid-19 were recorded “between December 8, 2022 and January 12, 2023,” Jiao Yahui, head of the medical administration office of the National Health Commission.
Of these deaths, 5,503 were directly caused by COVID-19-related respiratory failure, it noted.
In addition, 54,435 deaths were due to underlying diseases associated with Covid-19, according to the same source. This figure, which does not take into account deaths outside the hospital system, is probably an underestimate.
The WHO expressed doubts several times about the epidemiological data from Beijing. “We continue to call on China for faster, more regular and reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths, as well as more comprehensive sequencing of the virus in real time,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The Chinese government has rejected the criticism and called on the WHO to take an “impartial” stance on Covid-19.
On Wednesday, Chinese health authorities said it was “not necessary” at the moment to focus on the exact number of deaths related to the virus.
“The main task during the pandemic is to treat patients,” said epidemiologist Liang Wannian.
“At the moment, I do not think it is necessary to investigate the cause (of death) of each individual case,” insisted the one who is also head of the group of experts on Covid-19 in China for the National Health Commission.
Liang Wannian also argued that there was no international consensus on how to classify a Covid-19 related death.
If “a consensus cannot be reached, each country will rank according to its own situation,” Liang said.
China could determine mortality figures by examining excess mortality after the fact, suggested Wang Guiqiang, head of the department of infectious diseases at Peking University No. 1 Hospital.
At the time of that news conference on Wednesday, there had been just 37 Covid-19-related deaths in China since last month, out of a population of 1.4 billion.
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