China Fooling Itself By Underreporting COVID Deaths

The World Health Organization (WHO) has accused China of “under-representing” the severity of its COVID outbreak and hit its “narrow” definition of what constitutes a COVID death, Simone McCarthy reported for CNN.

Photo Insert: China has never been forthcoming about COVID infections and it may be possible that new variants have emerged in the country that was the birthplace of the COVID virus.

“We continue to ask China for more rapid, regular, reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths, as well as more comprehensive, real-time viral sequencing,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“WHO is concerned about the risk to life in China and has reiterated the importance of vaccination, including booster doses, to protect against hospitalization, severe disease, and death,” he added.

WHO executive director for health emergencies Mike Ryan said the numbers released by China “under-represent the true impact of the disease” in terms of hospital and ICU admissions, as well as deaths.

He acknowledged that many countries have seen lags in reporting hospital data, but pointed to China’s “narrow” definition of a COVID death as part of the issue. The country only lists those COVID patients who succumbed with respiratory failure as having died of COVID.

In the two weeks prior to January 5, China reported fewer than 20 deaths from local Covid cases, according to figures released on the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website – even as the outbreak has overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums amid apparent COVID urges in multiple cities.

WHO officials, who have grappled with Beijing’s tight control of data access throughout the pandemic, have become increasingly vocal in their calls for reliable information as a major outbreak rips China’s urban centers.

The surge in cases in a country of 1.4 billion has also raised global concerns about the potential emergence of new variants – and of China’s levels of monitoring and sharing data. China has never been forthcoming about COVID infections and it may be possible that new variants have emerged in the country that was the birthplace of the COVID virus.

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