At least one million covid dead in China

More than 70,000 people have died from the coronavirus in China since the country abandoned its zero-covid policy in December, according to information from the authorities.

The figure is considered to be greatly underestimated. According to independent experts, it could rather be about a million dead.

China is reporting 12,658 deaths from the coronavirus in the week of January 13-19, a figure to be added to the nearly 60,000 deaths authorities have reported from the first five weeks since the zero-covid policy was abandoned in early December. The figure is significantly higher than the 5,000 deaths previously reported in the country since the pandemic began, but significantly lower than estimates by independent experts.

Only people who died in hospital with confirmed coronavirus disease are counted in the public statistics from China, which means that the figure cannot be compared with other countries’ reported deaths. In early January, the World Health Organization (WHO) criticized what it called China’s “very narrow” definition of deaths linked to covid-19.

The number is seen as a serious understatement. According to independent experts, several hundred thousand or over a million people may have died from the disease since the restrictions were lifted in December.

In early January, newly acquired satellite images from several Chinese cities showed greatly increased activity at both crematoria and funeral homes, CNN reported.

600,000 to a million?

According to Professor Robert Booy, an infectious disease pediatrician at the University of Sydney in Australia, the death toll is probably somewhere between 600,000 and one million. According to him and several other experts, the virus was probably already spreading much more than previously known even before the restrictions were lifted in December.

– In 2022, the population of China fell for the first time since the “Great Leap Forward”, a loss of 850,000 people. They will lose at least that many in the coming weeks with covid, mainly very old people who are not fully vaccinated, he tells The Guardian.

The “Great Leap Forward” was Mao Zedong’s disastrous agricultural policies that led to the worst famine in China’s modern history in 1960.

Peak during the New Year’s celebration

British health risk analysis company Airfinity estimates that the death toll in China could peak around 36,000 per day during the Chinese New Year celebrations that began on January 21 and continue until February 5, reports AFP. During the celebration, tens of millions of people travel to the country to finally meet their relatives after the strict lockdowns of the zero-covid policy.

According to the company’s estimate, more than 600,000 people have already died from the disease since the country released its zero-covid policy in early December.

A significantly higher estimate is made by Professor Antoine Flahault at the University of Geneva. He bases his assessment on data on excess mortality in other countries, The Guardian reports.

– If you take Hong Kong, nowadays you have an excess mortality of approximately 2,000 deaths per million. If you convert that measure to China, you end up a little under three million deaths, he tells the newspaper, with the proviso that a prerequisite for the estimate is that China’s care would be as developed as elsewhere.

Over 90 percent

Recently, Guo Yanhong stated at the Chinese health care authority that the peak has been passed in terms of covid patients who come to so-called fever clinics, emergency departments and those with critical conditions, writes AFP. Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Institute of Infectious Disease Control, has said that China is unlikely to experience a second wave of infections shortly after the New Year celebrations as close to 80 percent of the population has already contracted the virus since restrictions were lifted.

By the end of January, more than 90 percent of the capital’s 22 million inhabitants have probably been infected with the coronavirus, according to researchers at the University of Hong Kong, writes the South China Morning Post, which is owned by the Chinese technology conglomerate Alibaba.

According to the report authors, it is difficult to assess the spread of infection based on the numbers reported by health authorities because mass testing has been stopped. According to their models, the peak of the contagion curve in Beijing was on December 11, just days after restrictions were lifted.

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