China now reports that about 60,000 people have died from COVID-19 since the country abruptly abandoned its zero COVID-19 policy in early December and the Omicron subspecies began tearing its population apart. The new death toll is a significant revision from China’s previous reported figures for that period of just 37. More data.
At a press conference on Saturday in Beijing, Jiao Yahui, director of the medical administration of China’s National Health Commission (NHC), told reporters that the country will have 59,938 people between December 8 and January 12. It said it recorded a COVID-related death in a person. Respiratory failure and 54,435 were associated with underlying medical conditions such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.
The new figure doubles the number of deaths from COVID-19, especially from COVID-19 respiratory failure, bringing the pandemic’s total to 10,775. Previously, WHO officials criticized the classification as “too narrow”, as only deaths from COVID-19 respiratory failure or pneumonia were attributed to China by his COVID-19.
In its data release on Saturday, the WHO issued a statement saying WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had met with NHC Director-General Ma Xiaowei to obtain the new information first hand. The WHO said it appreciated the communication and welcomed the new data, but demanded more.
“The WHO is analyzing this information and from early December 2022 [January 12, 2023]and allows a better understanding of the epidemiological situation and the impact of this wave in China,” the agency wrote.
However, the WHO noted gaps in the data and said it “requested a more detailed breakdown of the data state-by-state over time”. He also mentioned that he had asked China again for more gene sequencing data.
In comments to The Washington Post on Monday, WHO technical lead on COVID-19 Maria Van Kerkhov said the new death toll was sad but clearly not the full picture. “It’s really sad that the number of hospital-related deaths reached 60,000 last month,” he said. It should be considered minimal.”
The surge in reported deaths from 37 to nearly 60,000 since early December is striking, but the latest figures are still significantly lower than modeled estimates, suggesting the current wave. China’s death toll in the pandemic is in the hundreds of thousands. Numerous models predict over a million deaths in the country by the end of the wave in the coming weeks.
Still, van Kirkhove told the Post that the weekend’s revelations provided one important confirmation of the WHO’s recent efforts to get more data from China. “It shows that this data exists.”
