China on Saturday reported that at least sixty thousand people died from the COVID-19 virus between early December and January 2023.
This came after the government released little data about the status of the pandemic for weeks.
According to the National Health Commission, the toll included 5,503 deaths due to respiratory failure caused by COVID-19 and 54,435 fatalities from other ailments combined with COVID-19 since December 8.
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Findings revealed that the “deaths related to COVID” occurred in hospitals, meaning anyone who died at home would not be included in the numbers.
The report doubled China’s official COVID-19 death toll to 10,775 since the disease was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
China has counted only deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 death toll.
China stopped reporting data on COVID-19 deaths and infections after abruptly lifting anti-virus controls in early December despite a surge in infections that began in October and has filled hospitals with feverish, wheezing patients.
Hospitals in Beijing across the country have been overwhelmed with patients, and funeral homes and crematoriums have struggled to handle the dead.
The World Health Organization and other governments appealed for information after reports by city and provincial governments suggested as many as hundreds of millions of people in China might have contracted the virus.
The daily number of people going to those clinics peaked at 2.9 million on December 23 and had fallen by 83% to 477,000 on Thursday.
Dr Albert Ko, an infectious disease physician, and professor of public health at the Yale School of Public Health, said the number of COVID-19 deaths China is reporting may be a “significant underestimation” because of how they define them.
Ko said:
“They’re using a very narrow case definition for (COVID) deaths.
“They have to have respiratory failure … in order to be counted as a case you have to be at a place where they can say you fulfilled all the requirements, and that’s at a hospital.”
