China says 60,000 people have died from coronavirus since early December



CNN

Nearly 60,000 people have died from Covid in China since the country abruptly abandoned its strict “zero-Covid” policy in early December, a National Health Commission (NHC) medical official told a news conference in Beijing on Saturday.

Between Dec. 8 and Jan. 12, China recorded a total of 59,938 deaths related to COVID-19, according to Jiao Yahui, director of the medical affairs department at the National Health Commission. Among them, 5,503 died from respiratory failure caused by the new coronavirus infection, and 54,435 were people infected with the new coronavirus and patients with underlying diseases. Diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.

China had previously only listed as COVID-19 deaths those patients who died of respiratory failure. According to figures published on the website of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), China reported just 37 deaths from local Covid cases in the month following December 8 – despite a clear surge in Covid in several regions, The outbreak has overwhelmed hospitals and crematoria in cities.

The World Health Organization and the United States have accused China of “underestimating” the severity of the current outbreak, while top global health officials have also urged Beijing to share more data on the outbreak of the new coronavirus in China, where there have been reports or overwhelmed hospitals and funeral parlor.

On Saturday, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke with Chinese Health Minister Ma Xiaowei about the surge.

The information shared by Chinese officials included the latest numbers on outpatient visits, hospitalizations, patients requiring urgent care and intensive care, and hospital deaths, the World Health Organization said in a statement.

“WHO is analyzing this information, covering the period from early December 2022 to 12 January 2023, to better understand the epidemiological situation and impact of this wave in China,” it said.

The health organization also called for a more detailed disaggregation of data by province over time, and for the Chinese government to continue sharing more coronavirus sequences with open-access databases.

NHC medical official Jiao said fever clinics and Covid hospitalizations had peaked in China.

According to the National Health Commission, since the peak of over 2.86 million visits on December 23, 2022, the number of fever clinic visits in both urban and rural areas has been declining.

On Jan. 12, 477,000 people visited fever clinics across the country, Jiao said on Saturday.

Hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients also peaked on Jan. 5, 2023, when 1.63 million people were hospitalized, and as of Jan. 12, 1.27 million Covid patients were still hospitalized, Jiao added.

Despite the new data, Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said doubts about the Chinese data may remain.

“The substantial revision is an official response to international criticism of China’s lack of transparency and accuracy in reporting coronavirus-related data,” Huang said.

“Given that there is still a huge gap between the official Covid death toll and international estimates, I don’t think this revision will quell doubts about the government figures.”

Dongyan Kim, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, said the revisions to China’s death toll “should be a first step towards more timely, open and transparent sharing of coronavirus statistics between China and the world (between).

“In particular, the most important information includes infection rates in the general population, infection rates in the elderly, hospital and ICU admissions and occupancy rates, deaths directly attributable to Covid, and deaths from exacerbations of the underlying disease. said the virologist.

“Additionally, they should share the results of the variance analysis. In addition to the number of hospital deaths, the total number of Covid-related deaths should be provided. The Chinese who are going through the tsunami and the rest of the world need to know more about the Covid statistics in China.”

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