Chinese health authorities considered on Wednesday that “it is not necessary” at the moment to focus on the exact number of deaths related to covid-19after criticism from the WHO about the imprecision of the Beijing data.
After three years of drastic restrictions, China abruptly lifted most of its sanitary measures against the coronavirus in early December.
The number of patients increased considerably and hospitals are overflowing with elderly patients while crematoriums are overflowing.
“At the moment, I don’t think it is necessary to investigate the cause (of death) of each individual case,” said epidemiologist Liang Wannian. “The main task during the pandemic is to treat patients,” said the head of the group of experts against covid commissioned by the National Health Commission, which acts as a ministry.
China could determine the numbers of deaths by examining after the fact the excess mortalityWang Guiqiang, head of the department of infectious diseases at Peking University Hospital, suggested at the press conference.
According to official figures, only 37 covid-related deaths have been recorded in China since last month, out of a population of 1.4 billion.
Beijing revised its methodology for accounting for coronavirus deaths in December. Currently, only people who die directly of respiratory failure related to the virus.
This change in methodology means that a large number of deaths are no longer recorded as being caused by covid.
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Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) criticized this new Chinese definition of death from covid considering it “too narrow”.
“We continue to ask China for faster, more regular and reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths, as well as more complete and real-time sequencing of the virus,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Beijing criticized these criticisms and called on the WHO to adopt an “impartial” position regarding the covid. (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
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