The World Health Organization (WHO) criticized China’s new definition of deaths from Covid-19 on Wednesday, calling it “very low”, and stated that official statistics do not reflect the true impact of the epidemic in the country. .
“We believe that the current figures published by China underrepresent the real impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, intensive care admissions and especially in terms of deaths,” Michael Ryan, head of the organization for the management of health emergency situations.
China is currently facing its worst outbreak of infections after the lifting, in early December, of its “zero Covid” policy.
Despite the wave of cases, the country reports few deaths linked to the coronavirus after a controversial change in counting methodology.
Now, only people who died directly from respiratory failure linked to Covid-19 are counted in the statistics.
“We think this definition is too narrow,” Ryan said.
Last week, the WHO met with the Chinese authorities to discuss the explosion in the number of infections and hospitalizations.
“We continue to ask China for faster, regular and reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths, as well as the most complete and real-time sequence of the virus,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed on Wednesday.
“These figures are useful to WHO and the world as a whole, and we urge all countries to share them. The data remains essential for the organization to make regular, rapid and robust assessments of the risks associated with the current situation and adapt its advice and guidelines accordingly”.
