Since early December, 60,000 individuals, according to China, have died from COVID.

 

Since China abruptly abandoned its stringent "zero-Covid" policy in early December, about 60,000 individuals have perished from the disease, a medical representative from the National Health Commission (NHC) revealed at a news briefing in Beijing on Saturday.

Between December 8 and January 12, according to Jiao Yahui, head of the NHC's medical affairs division, China recorded 59,938 deaths linked to COVID. Of those fatalities, 5,503 were attributable to respiratory failure brought on by Covid infections, while 54,435 involved individuals who had both Covid infections and underlying illnesses like cancer and cardiovascular conditions.

Only those Covid patients who passed away from respiratory failure were previously listed as having died from Covid in China. According to data posted on the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, China reported only 37 local Covid-related deaths in the month following December 8 even though the outbreak has overrun hospitals and cemeteries amid apparent Covid increases in several towns.

Top global health officials have also urged Beijing to share more information about the explosive spread of Covid in China, where reports of overcrowded hospitals and funeral homes have surfaced. The World Health Organization, the United States, and China have accused each other of "under-representing" the severity of its current outbreak.

Chinese Health Minister Ma Xiaowei and WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus discussed the spike on Saturday.

The WHO said in a statement that Chinese officials exchanged data included the most recent figures on outpatient clinics, hospitalizations, patients needing emergency treatment and critical care, and hospital mortality.

It claimed that by evaluating the data, which ranges from early December 2022 to January 12, 2023, "WHO is assessing this information and enables a better understanding of the epidemiological situation and the impact of this wave in China."

The health agency also asked the Chinese government to keep providing new coronavirus sequences to open access databases and for a more thorough breakdown of data over time by province.

Fever clinical visits and Covid hospitalizations in China have already peaked, according to Jiao, the NHC medical official.

The NHC reports a decline in fever clinic visits, both in urban and rural areas, since the high on December 23, 2022, when more over 2.86 million people went there.

According to Jiao on Saturday, 477,000 individuals visited fever centers across China on January 12.

Hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients reached their high on January 5, 2023, according to the NHC, when 1.63 million people were admitted. As of January 12, 1.27 million Covid users were still hospitalized, Jiao added.

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, stated that despite the new data, there are still likely to be questions regarding China's data.

According to Huang, "the significant modification is an official response to foreign criticism of China's reporting of Covid-related statistics for its lack of transparency and veracity."

I don't believe the correction will allay outside concerns about the government data given the ongoing enormous difference between the official figure of Covid deaths and the international estimate.

A revised death toll for China "should be the first step towards a more prompt, open, and transparent communication of Covid statistics (between) China and the world," according to Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong.

The most crucial data, according to the virologist, "includes, in particular, the infection rate in the general population, the infection rate in the elderly, the admission and occupancy of hospitals and ICUs, the number of deaths directly attributed to Covid, and the number of deaths due to the worsening of underlying diseases."

"They should also communicate the findings of the variant analysis. The overall number of Covid-related deaths should be disclosed in addition to the number of hospital-related deaths. More information regarding the Covid statistics in China is needed for both the Chinese people who are currently experiencing the tsunami and the rest of the globe.