China acknowledges 60,000 deaths from Covid-19 since December

Peking. Since ending its zero-covid policy and being criticized for its lack of transparency about the pandemic, China acknowledged on Saturday that at least 60,000 deaths from Covid-19 have been recorded since early December, despite the World Health Organization ( WHO) requested more detailed data.

After three years of enforcing some of the most draconian restrictions in the world, the Chinese government abruptly lifted most of its coronavirus health provisions in early December, following a wave of protests against the severity of the measures in several cities across the country.

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.

“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 Health Commission.

In December, Beijing revised its methodology for counting deaths from covid and now only people who died directly from coronavirus-related respiratory failure 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.

The WHO criticized this new definition and considered it “too narrow”.

Its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, requested on Saturday “a chronological breakdown of the data by province.”

Doubts

The WHO had already expressed doubts about the Beijing data, calling for faster and more reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths and more complete sequencing of the virus.

The Chinese government has rejected the criticism and called on the WHO to take an “impartial” stance on covid.