In the midst of an escalation of COVID-19 infections in Chinathe health authorities assured that it is “unnecessary to focus on the figures of deaths from COVID”.
The statement by epidemiologist Liang Wannian, head of the COVID expert group commissioned by the National Health Commission, came in response to calls by the World Health Organization for the country to collect reliable and accurate figures.
“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.
However, Wannian said that “the main task during the pandemic is to treat patients.”
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China could determine death figures by examining a posteriori excess mortality, Wang Guiqiang, head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Peking University Hospital, suggested at the news conference.
Currently, the figures for deaths from COVID-19 only record those who die of respiratory failure related to the virus, which means that a large number of deaths of infected people are left out of the classification.
With this methodology, the country of 1.4 billion inhabitants only counted 37 deaths from COVID-19 in the last month.
According to WHO statistics, China reported 252,000 COVID-19 infections and some 700 deaths in the first week of January. (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
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