China has just officially reported previous cases of deaths from COVID-19. Two cases have been reported as of Monday (19/11/2022), after the last death was recorded on 3 December.
Many estimate the number of reported cases of death from COVID-19 to be far from the official figure, especially as mass testing is no longer being done. Reuters reports also showed the crematorium was overflowing with hearses, workers in hazmat suits hauling bodies into the facility.
However, it is unclear whether they are all related to the COVID-19 case. Local media reported on Friday that two government journalists had died after contracting COVID-19, then a 23-year-old medical student died positive for COVID-19 on Saturday. There is also no information yet whether any of them are included in the official government register of COVID-19 death report.
“The (official) number is clearly lower than the number of deaths from COVID-19,” said Yanzhong Huang, a global health specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a US think tank.
“This may reflect a country’s lack of ability to effectively track and monitor the disease situation on the ground following the lifting of mass PCR testing policies, but it may also be driven by efforts to avoid mass panic over the spike of deaths from COVID-19,” he said.
The NHC reported 1,995 symptomatic cases of COVID-19 on 18 December, up from 2,097 the day before. The number of COVID-19 cases is also unreliable because testing has declined.
Forecast of 1.5 million dead
Some experts fear that the death toll from COVID-19 in China could rise above 1.5 million in the coming months. They also urged China to immediately increase vaccination coverage, especially among the elderly.
The vaccination rate in China was over 90%, but injection coverage for adults who received a booster fell to 57.9% and 42.3% for seniors aged 80 and older.
China’s chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou said on Saturday that the country was in the initial stage of three waves of COVID-19 expected this winter.
“I think at the moment 60 to 70 percent of my colleagues are infected,” Liu, 37, an employee of the Beijing university cafeteria, told Reuters.
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