TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official statistics on COVID-19 deaths, a Chinese health official said. It’s a strict definition that limits the number of reported deaths, in the midst of an outbreak of the virus after the country’s pandemic restrictions were lifted.
Deaths of patients with pre-existing medical problems are not included in COVID-19 deaths, said Wang Guiqiang, chief of infectious diseases at the No. 1 Hospital. 1 of Peking University.
China has always used conservative criteria in its medical statistics, for both influenza and COVID-19. In most countries, such as the United States, recommendations state that any death in which COVID-19 was a factor is considered a COVID-19-associated death.
In essence, Wang’s remarks on Tuesday were simply clarifying publicly what the country has been doing during the pandemic.
China reported no coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, effectively subtracting one from the official tally, which stood at 5,241 people in total, according to the National Health Commission’s daily report, which did not give reasons for the withdrawal.
The clarification of how China officially records COVID-19 deaths has come amid a surge in cases across the country after restrictions were lifted. But it’s hard to get an accurate picture of the outbreak because authorities have stopped requiring frequent PCR tests and many people are testing at home. There are anecdotal reports of many sufferers in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
Shanghai was hit by an outbreak fueled by the omicron variant this year. Many people at the time told the AP that their elderly relatives who tested positive for COVID-19 and died had not entered the city’s official death count. When patients had underlying diseases, their deaths were blamed on those earlier problems.
An AP investigation later revealed that the data was disguised by the way health authorities compile their statistics, as they apply very narrow, non-transparent and sometimes variable criteria, as happened in Shanghai when authorities changed their definition of positive cases .
These stricter criteria have meant that the death toll from COVID-19 will always be significantly lower than in other countries.
An Associated Press reporter saw several people being taken away from funeral homes in Beijing last week, and two relatives told the AP that their relatives had died after testing positive for COVID-19. However, the country did not report any deaths from the disease last week.
Each country counts cases and deaths differently, and direct comparisons often provide little information due to erratic diagnostic testing.
However, experts have reiterated that the authorities must err on the side of caution in counting the dead. Problems in these tallies have raised questions in countries from South Africa to Russia.
The World Health Organization estimated in May that nearly 15 million people had died from COVID-19 or from overburdened health systems in the first two years of the pandemic. This is above the official death toll of 6 million people for that period.
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AP science journalist Aniruddha Ghosal contributed to this report from New Delhi.
