Weeks after insisting it was not necessary to put out the exact Covid fatality count from the latest wave of infections, China on Saturday revealed its data for a little over a month, which took the global community’s breath away. Its National Health Commission (NHC) revealed the country had recorded as many as 59,938 Covid-related deaths between December 8 and January 12.
While the sudden burst of glasnost was certainly welcome, the toll is expected higher as the NHC data is on deaths at hospitals alone. The jawdropping figure was in contrast to the few dozen deaths that had officially been recorded for December despite visual evidence of hospitals overflowing with patients and crematoriums being overrun by the Covid surge in the country.
China’s official toll has now gone up to just 65,210 since the coronavirus first broke out in its city of Wuhan in December 2019, indicating the extent of its data doctoring. The World Health Organisation had on Wednesday rapped China for heavily underreporting the number of Covid deaths from the current wave. On the positive side, the peak of the latest wave appears to have passed based on the decline in the number of patients visiting fever clinics, NSC official Jiao Yahui said.
The daily number of people going to those clinics fell by 83% on Thursday, he said (see box). “The number of elderly patients dying from illness is relatively large, which suggests that we should pay more attention to them and try our best to save their lives,” said Jiao. Amid the Covid wave, when China reopened its borders to international travellers on January 8, a host of countries, including India imposed mandatory Covid tests on arrivals from China. Beijing retaliated by suspending issuance of new visas to fliers from South Korea and Japan.