(MENAFN- Asia Times) As suspicions grow countrywide and worldwide that official Chinese figures on Covid deaths bear little relationship with the actual numbers, the World Health Organization has asked the government to disclose more data.
A research report published by the National School of Development of Peking University said that 900 million people, or 64% of the total population in China, had been infected as of January 11.
But government authorities in Beijing said on Saturday the number of Covid patients, who died in hospitals, amounted to 59,938 between December 8, 2022 and January 12, 2023.
The WHO requested a more detailed breakdown of data by province over time.
China's foreign ministry said Monday it had already achieved high transparency by announcing its Covid data to the world. However, Chinese columnists said the official death toll failed to reflect the epidemic situation in mainland China.
A Guangdong-based writer said the 60,000 figure was only 7% of the number of normal deaths in China, given that 10.14 million people died in mainland China in 2021. She said the figure could not explain why funeral services in major cities had been so numerous as to strain facilities since mid-December.
According to the UK-based health data firm Airfinity, the number of Covid deaths in China may have reached 584,000 so far and could reach 1.7 million by the end of April.
Since China relaxed its Covid rules on December 7, many netizens said over social media that their infected parents or elderly relatives had died at home as they could not be admitted to hospitals.
A Liaoning-based columnist said the official death toll was very“conservative” as many people in rural areas could have died without undergoing a rapid Covid test.
Citing clinical data compiled by Tao Ling at the Xijing Hospital of Air Force Military Medical University, the columnist said 88,430 people could have been killed if 100 million people were infected.
A villager in Xianyang in Shaanxi province said he knew that three people aged over 70 in his village had died in this epidemic wave. The village's leader said 946 out of the 1,395 people had tested positive as of January 7 while 264 of them were over 60.
A villager in Changle in Shandong province said about half of the 450 people in the village had been infected as of January 7 with a dozen of them showing serious illness symptoms.
The official version
Officially, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said a total of 14,171 Covid cases were reported with three patients dead on January 8. It stopped disclosing its Covid-19 figures from January 9.
The WHO on January 11 called on the Chinese government to disclose more Covid data, including the number of serious cases and deaths and information about the strains circulating including possible new mutations of the virus. But Beijing said it had already done so and hoped the WHO would look at China's Covid response scientifically and rationally.
China announced its Covid death toll but only counted those who died in hospitals. Photo: Saturday, Ma Xiaowei, director of China's National Health Commission, held a meeting with Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the WHO. On the same day, Jiao Yahui, director of the Bureau of Medical Administration of the National Health Commission, unveiled more data.
Jiao said a total of 59,938 Covid patients in medical institutions had died between December 8 and January 12. She said 90.8% of these people had cerebrovascular, respiratory, metabolic or urinary diseases.
Jiao said the average age of the deceased was 80.3 years while 90.1% of them were aged 65 years or above.
She said the number of people who sought medical treatment at fever clinics fell from 2.87 million per day on December 23 to 477,000 on January 12. She said the number of new emergency cases dropped from 1.53 million on January 2 to 1.09 million on January 12 while the outstanding number of serious cases decreased from 128,000 on January 5 to 105,000 on January 12.
The WHO said it welcomed the Covid data published by China and requested that this type of detailed information continue to be shared. It said the data indicated a decline in case numbers, hospitalizations, and those requiring critical care in China.
It said it would continue to work with China, providing technical advice and support, and engaging in analyzing the situation.
Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, said it was a great effort for Beijing to have announced the death toll. Hu said it was difficult to count the number of deaths outside hospitals.
He said other countries's Covid data might not be accurate. He said, for example, the US reported that only 100 million of its people had been infected but the real figure could be around 310 million.
Some state media, including the Economic Observer, said China had achieved a miracle as only 60,000 out of 900 million Covid patients died.
They said China's death rate was 0.0066%, much lower than 0.0783% in Singapore, 0.2% in Japan and 1.13% in the world. They said although another epidemic wave will probably emerge in May, China doesn't have far to go to defeat Covid-19.
Sensitive topic
Many Chinese columnists said the number of Covid deaths in this epidemic wave could be much bigger – but it appears that for them to say so too explicitly would be considered dangerous.
The Guangdong-based writer who is quoted above said that she would not challenge the health officials, who had reported that the figure did not include those who died at homes or lived in rural areas.
Still, some Chinese media have sent reporters to check the epidemic situations in the rural areas.
A doctor in Sanxingdui Town in Sichuan province told the state-owned Farmers' Daily that 31 of the 220 Covid patients who aged 65 or above in a village were in serious condition as many of them were unvaccinated or had chronic diseases. The doctor said four of them had died over the past month.
read: why has china stopped reporting covid numbers?
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