BEIJING, Dec. 21 (BNA): China counts only deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 death toll, in a narrow definition that limits the number of deaths reported, as an outbreak of the coronavirus, a Chinese health official said. The virus escalated following the easing of pandemic-related restrictions.
Wang Guiqiang, head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at No. 1 Hospital of Peking University, said deaths that occur in patients with pre-existing diseases are not counted as COVID-19 deaths.
China has long been conservative in how it counts diseases, whether from the flu or COVID-19. In most countries, including the United States, the guidelines state that any death in which COVID-19 is a factor or contributor is counted as a COVID-19 related death.
Indeed, Wang’s comments on Tuesday publicly spelled out what the country has been doing throughout the pandemic.
On Wednesday, China reported no new COVID-19 deaths, and in fact subtracted one death from the total number of victims, lowering it to 5,241, according to a daily tally by the National Health Commission, which did not provide an explanation for the drop.
The clarification of how China has officially recorded COVID-19 deaths comes as cases surge across the country amid an easing of restrictions. However, the total number remains unclear, as China has stopped requiring daily PCR tests and many people are testing at home. Anecdotally, many people fell ill in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
Earlier this year, Shanghai was hit by an outbreak caused by the Omicron. Several people told the AP that elderly family members who tested positive for COVID-19 and died were not counted in the city’s official death toll. When patients had underlying diseases, deaths were attributed to these.
An AP investigation then showed that the numbers had been clouded by the way health authorities tallied COVID-19 statistics, applying narrower, less transparent and sometimes variable criteria as Shanghai changed the way it defined positive cases.
These narrower standards meant that the number of COVID-19 deaths in China would always be much lower than in many other countries.
An Associated Press reporter saw several people being removed from funeral homes in Beijing last week, and two relatives told the AP that their loved ones had died after testing positive for COVID-19. However, last week the country reported no deaths due to COVID-19.
FKN