China reported on Wednesday that no one perished from Covid-19 on December 20 due to modifying the standards for recording the virus’s fatalities. The Covid death numbers, according to the Chinese government, only include individuals who pass away as a direct result of respiratory failure brought on by the virus.
This implies that the majority of viral-related deaths are no longer recorded. According to regulations in many other nations, end when the virus is a factor or contributor should be registered as a Covid death.
When the country’s deaths were updated, and one end in Beijing was eliminated from the overall tally, the revised statistics reflected the change in criteria.
Top Criterias for preventing Covid deaths
- On December 20, China reported no Covid deaths compared to five the day before. The National Health Commission said that the overall number was amended to 5,241 after one death in Beijing was deleted due to the adjustment in criteria. On Tuesday, the nation recorded 3,101 new instances of symptomatic Covid infections, of which 3,049 were domestic cases. With this, 386,276 confirmed cases with symptoms were reported overall.
- The actual situation at crematoriums across China, which are struggling to handle the influx of dead remains, is in stark contrast to the official number of Covid fatalities in China. Crematorium staff members from the northeast to the southwest of the nation said they are finding it challenging to keep up with the rise in deaths. In Chongqing, a crematorium worker claimed there was nowhere left to store the dead.
- Weibo, a social media site popular in China, has seen users post about their problems with the rapidly spreading virus. They observed longer-than-usual lines at crematoriums and funeral houses that were having trouble keeping up with the rising body count. According to a Bloomberg article, a worker at a crematorium in Hebei claimed in a since-deleted Weibo post that his facility performed up to 22 cremations daily. He stated that up until December, they had only performed four or five cremations.
- Several municipal governments encouraged people with mild cases of the virus to go to work this week as subjects of the illness rapidly increased across the nation. It was suggested in Guiyang, Guizhou province, that infected people with minimal or no symptoms work in various industries. This includes employees in state-owned businesses, government agencies, hospitals, emergency departments, express delivery services, and supermarkets.
5. The growing number of Covid cases in China is a topic of interest worldwide. The US argued that stopping the outbreak was in the best interests of the entire world and offered to share vaccines with the nation. In his remarks to the media, Ned Price, a spokesman for the State Department, mentioned the People’s Republic of China and said, Not just for the PRC, but also for the sustained economic recovery of the global community, it is crucial that the PRC is able to bring this pandemic under control.
6. World Health Organization (WHO) advisors warned Reuters that it might be too soon to proclaim the end of the Covid-19 pandemic emergency phase because of China’s growing number of cases. A virologist named Marion Koopmans, who is on a WHO committee looking at Covid, said, “It is debatable whether the pandemic can be considered over when such a sizable portion of the globe is only now experiencing its second wave. Although it is obvious that we are in a different stage of the epidemic, I believe that the upcoming wave in China will be unpredictable.”
7. The government is stepping up its preparation for Covid in India as well. Rajesh Bhushan, secretary of the Union health ministry, has asked state governments to send samples from positive cases to genome sequencing labs on a priority basis. On Wednesday, Mansukh Mandaviya, the union minister of health, will also host a meeting to assess the situation in India.
Following the abrupt lifting of years-long lockdowns, quarantines, and mass testing by the Chinese government, hospitals are suffering, pharmacy shelves are empty, and crematoriums are overburdened. Since the decision to relax the zero-Covid policy, China has documented seven deaths, all of which occurred in Beijing; however, one death was omitted from the official count on Wednesday.
The decision to exclude the data came when the government declared that only individuals who had succumbed to respiratory failure brought on by the virus would be included in the Covid mortality figures.
In the past, Covid deaths were those caused by illnesses contracted while a person was infected with the virus. This method of tracking Covid deaths accounts for numerous deaths in other nations.
“During the moment, underlying disorders continue to be the leading cause of death after infection with the Omicron variety,” said Wang Guiqiang of Peking University First Hospital at a press conference held by the National Health Commission (NHC) on Tuesday.
Only a tiny percentage of elderly persons die from respiratory failure brought on by infection with Covid, he added, adding that most had other underlying illnesses.
Additionally, a specialist told AFP that the new definition would significantly increase cases because the common Omicron variation of Covid-19 does not harm the lungs as severely as other Covid-19 strains.
