In a press release published on Saturday January 21, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports at least 12,000 Covid deaths in hospital (681 following respiratory failure and 11,977 from another illness aggravated by Covid) between January 13 and 19. The previous assessment had counted 60,000 deaths in the space of a month in the country’s health establishments. All in all, therefore, China would have officially registered 72,000 deaths since the end of the “zero Covid” policy.
This data does not include Chinese people who died at home from Covid. Furthermore, the balance sheet is probably underestimated.
The Omicron wave would have infected 80% of the Chinese population
According to CDC chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou, “The current epidemic wave has already infected around 80% of the population in the country”.
As explained The Guardianthis figure, which equates to around 1.2 billion people, has prompted some pandemic experts to estimate that over a million Chinese may be dead – far more than the official government tally of around 72,000.
Professor Robert Booy, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases at the University of Sydney, told the newspaper that the death toll is likely to be between 600,000 and 1 million.
A toll that could be even heavier, according to Professor Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva “If you take Hong Kong, you have excess mortality today… which is around 2,000 deaths per million. If you convert that rate to China, you get to just under 3 million deaths,” did he declare.
With the Chinese New Year festivities (which took place on Sunday January 22), which encouraged travel in the country and intergenerational contacts, the toll could well increase.
According to the British medical analysis company Airfinity, the daily number of Covid deaths in China is expected to climb to around 36,000 on this occasion.
Source: AFP, The Guardian.
