60,000 deaths from COVID, according to China, have occurred since early December.
A medical representative from the National Health Commission (NHC) said at a news briefing in Beijing on Saturday that close to 60,000 people have perished from Covid in China since the nation abruptly abandoned its stringent “zero-Covid” policy in early December.
China reported 59,938 Covid-related deaths between December 8 and January 12, according to Jiao Yahui, head of the NHC’s medical affairs division. Of those fatalities, 5,503 were caused by respiratory failure brought on by Covid infections, and 54,435 were caused by Covid infections in addition to underlying illnesses like cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
China has historically only included Covid patients who passed away from respiratory failure on its list of fatalities. Despite the fact that the outbreak has overrun hospitals and cemeteries amid apparent Covid surges in numerous cities, China reported only 37 deaths from local Covid cases in the month following December 8, according to statistics posted on the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
The World Health Organization and the United States have accused China of “under-representing” the severity of its current outbreak, and top global health officials have urged Beijing to share more information about the disease’s explosive spread in China, where reports of overcrowded hospitals and cemeteries have surfaced.
The WHO’s Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus discussed the spike with the Chinese Health Minister Ma Xiaowei on Saturday.
According to a statement from the WHO, Chinese officials exchanged data that included the most recent figures on hospitalizations, outpatient clinic visits, patients needing emergency care, critical care, and hospital mortality.
In order to better understand the epidemiological situation and the consequences of this wave in China, the WHO is evaluating the data, which spans early December 2022 to January 12, 2023.
The health agency also asked for a more thorough breakdown of data over time by province and recommended that the Chinese government continue to share new coronavirus sequences with free-access databases.
Fever clinical visits and Covid hospitalizations in China, according to Jiao, the medical official, have already reached their pinnacle.
The NHC reports that since their peak on December 23, 2022, when more than 2.86 million individuals visited them, visits to fever clinics in both urban and rural regions have been falling.
In the meanwhile, China
What’s occurring in China, and what does it mean for the rest of the world?
In China, fever clinics saw 477,000 patients on January 12th, according to Jiao on Saturday.
According to the NHC, hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients peaked on January 5, 2023, when 1.63 million people were admitted. As of January 12, 1.27 million Covid patients were still hospitalized, Jiao noted.
