The National Sanitary Commission of China announced this Saturday a total of 59,938 COVID-related deaths between December 8, when the authorities began to relax the restrictions they maintained against the pandemic, and January 12 of this year.
According to agency officials, the average age of the deceased registered in medical centers was 80.3 years, the newspaper said today.Global Times.
Likewise, 90.1% of the deceased were over 65 years of age, and more than 90% suffered from underlying diseases, according to the Commission.
The agency clarified that it performs PCR tests to classify patient deaths as related to COVID, and that the causes of deaths from the virus were respiratory failure (5,503) or underlying diseases that worsen after developing COVID (54,435).
The agency also assured this Saturday that serious cases of COVID in the current outbreak spread throughout the country reached its peak on January 5, about three weeks after the authorities relaxed the ‘zero COVID’ policy that they had maintained until then.
That day there were 128,000 serious cases, and that on the 12th it fell to 105,000 serious cases, according to commission officials.
The rapid spread of the virus in China in recent weeks has cast doubt on the reliability of official figures, which until now have reported only a handful of recent deaths from the disease despite numerous scenes of high-pressure hospitals.
The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, assured last week that China is not giving complete numbers of deaths from COVID in the current outbreak, which prevents knowing the true extent of the disease even at global level.World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, December 14, 2022. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File
China defends that it has shared its data “in an open, timely and transparent manner” since the start of the pandemic, and has asked the international community to avoid “politicizing the pandemic” as a result of the restrictions imposed on travelers from the Asian country. , such as the requirement of some countries to present PCR tests before traveling.
According to a study by Peking University, around 900 million people have already been infected in China after the country dismantled the ‘zero COVID’ policy and opted for more lax control of the pandemic.
However, other Chinese experts believe that the peak incidence of COVID cases in China will continue “until February or March”, as the former chief epidemiologist of the China Center for Disease Control Zeng Guang recently predicted.Pedestrians wearing face masks walk on a street in a business district in downtown Beijing, China, on Jan. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Zeng referred to the different phases of the COVID epidemic faced by different cities and regions: “The peak of the epidemic has passed in places like Beijing but it is yet to start in some spots like rural areas,” he noted.
In addition, the peak of severe cases of the disease will last “for even longer”, and he cited the example of Beijing, where “the crest of the wave of cases has already ended, but the wave of severe cases is still active”.
The former official expressed his concern about “the situation in China’s rural areas” and called for “attention” to “implement a prevention strategy” in them, as the authorities have indicated in recent weeks given the approaching Lunar New Year. , the festive period in which the Chinese usually return to their places of origin.
