Beijing.- China, criticized for its lack of transparency about the Covid-19 epidemic, announced this Saturday nearly 60,000 deaths related to the virus in the last month, since sanitary restrictions were lifted in that country.
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 Commission, reported at a press conference. of health.
Of these deaths, 5,503 were directly caused by epidemic-related respiratory failure, he noted.
In addition, 54,435 deaths were due to underlying diseases associated with Covid-19, according to the same source.
The average age of those who died since December 8 was 80.3 years and 90.1% were 65 years of age or older, according to the Health Commission.
And more than 90% of the dead suffered from cancer, heart or lung disease or kidney problems, Jiao Yahui added.
The National Health Commission said these deaths occurred in hospitals, leaving open the possibility of more deaths in private homes.
Despite this, the health authority said the “emergency peak” of the latest outbreak appears to have passed.
The high point of the latest wave of infections appears to be easing considering the drop in the number of patients attending fever clinics, Jiao Yahui said.
The number of daily visits to these types of centers reached its maximum of 2.9 million people on December 23, and on Thursday it had dropped 83% with just 477,000 cases, the official added.
“These data show that the peak of the national emergency has passed,” he told the media.
WHO criticism by methodology
In December, authorities in the Asian country revised their methodology for counting coronavirus deaths and now only people who died directly from respiratory failure related to the disease 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 latest figure for this Saturday, which does not take into account deaths outside the hospital system, is probably underestimated, since the WHO had already expressed its doubts several times about the epidemiological data from Beijing and considered that they are “too limited” reports.
“We continue to ask China for faster, regular and reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths, as well as more complete sequencing of the virus in real time,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the time.
The World Health Organization and other governments asked Beijing for more information after reports from municipal and provincial authorities suggested hundreds of millions of people may have contracted the virus.
The Chinese government has rejected the criticism and called on the WHO to take an “impartial” stance on Covid-19.
Last Wednesday, the Chinese health authorities said that for the moment it was “not necessary” 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 each individual case,” insisted the one who is also head of the Covid expert group in China for the National Health Commission.
Liang Wannian also argued that there was no international consensus on how to classify a Covid-related death.
“(If) a consensus cannot be reached, each country will rank according to its own situation,” he 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.
First balance since the lifting of restrictions
After three years of enforcing some of the world’s most draconian measures, China abruptly lifted most of its coronavirus health provisions early last month, following protests against the severity of these provisions in several cities across the country.
Later, the Chinese government stopped providing data on infections and deaths from the coronavirus, even with the rebound in infections that began in October and filled hospitals with patients with fever and trouble breathing.
At the height of the pandemic, China kept the infection and death rate below that of the United States and other nations thanks to its strict “zero Covid” protocol, which sought to isolate each positive.
This closed the access to many cities, confined millions of people to their homes and provoked multiple protests.
As of Wednesday the 11th, only 37 Covid-19-related deaths had been recorded in China since December 2022, within a population of 1.4 billion.
Since then the number of patients has increased considerably.
Hospitals have been overwhelmed by elderly patients and crematoriums have received large numbers of corpses. Despite this, the authorities had so far only reported a small number of deaths.
With the uptick, the United States, South Korea and other countries are now again requiring travelers from China to submit a negative coronavirus test, among other checks.
The Chinese government responded to the move on Wednesday by suspending the issuance of new visas to travelers from South Korea and Japan.
