Beijing. A shocking report has come out from China on the deaths due to Corona virus. Experts said China has reported nearly 60,000 Covid-related deaths during the first five weeks of its current outbreak, the highest number ever in the world. The National Health Commission revealed this weekend that China’s sudden pivot from a Covid zero in early December led to a surge in Omicron infections and 59,938 virus-related deaths in the country’s hospitals by January 12.
While the official tally undercounts the few dozen deaths previously recorded, it drew widespread criticism both at home and abroad, including from the World Health Organisation. Experts say this is still likely an underestimate given the sheer scale of the outbreak and the death toll from Omicron seen in other countries that initially adopted a zero COVID strategy. While this figure is roughly in line with Zhang’s estimate coming from the country’s hospitals, he said it is a fraction of the total COVID deaths nationwide.
A report using the National School of Development at Peking University found that 64 percent of the population was infected by mid-January. They estimated that 900,000 people would have died in the past five weeks, based on a conservative 0.1 percent case fatality rate. This means that the official hospital death toll is less than 7 percent of the total mortality seen during the outbreak.
Official figures mean 1.17 deaths per day for every million people in the country during the five weeks, according to a Bloomberg analysis. This is much lower than the average daily death rate seen in other countries that initially chased Covid zero or managed to contain the virus after relaxing their pandemic rules.
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Tags: beijing news, Chinese news, covid 19, world news
FIRST PUBLISHED : January 17, 2023, 05:40 IST
