China reports 60,000 deaths from COVID after lifting 'zero tolerance'

The PRC lifted tough restrictions in early December, after which it faced a sharp increase in the number of cases, queues for cremations and a shadow market for cremations formed. Beijing has previously claimed that only 5,200 people have died in the entire pandemic.

In CHINA, 59,938 people have died from CORONAVIRUS in the month since the beginning of the lifting of the “zero tolerance” policy, said National HEALTH Commission (NHC) spokesman Jiao Yahui, reports Global Times.

The data are given for the period from December 8 to January 12. According to the NHC, the death of 5.5 thousand dead patients was caused by respiratory failure, the rest died from a combination of coronavirus with other diseases.

The average age of those who died was 80.3 years, nine out of ten who died were over 65 years old. The number of deaths among the elderly is relatively high due to the worsening of cardiovascular diseases among the elderly in winter and the increase in the incidence of respiratory diseases, Jiao Yahui explained.

BLOOMBERG learned about the "paralysis of the system" in China due to deaths from covid Society

Bloomberg notes that the data from the Chinese agency does not allow us to estimate the actual number of deaths from covid-19 , since in December the authorities stopped publishing daily statistics and adopted a narrower definition of deaths from the infection, it decided to take into account only those who died from respiratory failure caused by coronavirus .

The statistics thus exclude those who had comorbidities exacerbated by the coronavirus, while the US , UK and Hong Kong have less lax requirements.

CNN showed queues at the crematorium in China amid the outbreak of COVID Society

China 's "zero tolerance" policy for the coronavirus involved tight restrictions even with a small rise in the incidence . It has been adhered to in Beijing since 2020. Following demonstrations, the National Health Commission agreed to ease restrictions in early December. The abrupt lifting of measures led to a new outbreak of the disease: in December, almost 250 million people in China were infected with COVID-19, Bloomberg reported. Official statistics did not confirm these data, until mid-January, Beijing reported only 5241 deaths during the entire period of the pandemic in China.

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By the beginning of 2023, crematoria in the largest cities of China were overflowing, one of the employees of the Shanghai crematorium told Bloomberg that “the whole system is now paralyzed” and no one can cope with the situation. A shadow business has emerged in the country to organize cremation out of turn at an increased cost.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has accused the Chinese authorities of hiding accurate information about the spread of the infection. “We believe that the current data published in China does not fully reflect the true impact of the disease in terms of hospitalizations, admissions to intensive care units, especially in terms of mortality,” said the Executive DIRECTOR of the World Health Organization (WHO) Program for Health Emergencies Michael Ryan in early January.

Before that, scientists from China presented data to WHO staff, according to which not a single new variant of coronavirus was detected in a state with a population of 1.4 billion people. At the same time, WHO believes that the recent outbreak of COVID-19 in China is caused by Omicron BA.5.2 and BF.7 sub-options.