No new deaths from Covid-19 were reported by China on Wednesday, after a controversial change in methodology to identify cases there and despite an unprecedented wave of contamination.

Since 2020, the Chinese government has imposed strict health restrictions, in the name of a so-called “zero Covid” policy which has made it possible to protect those most at risk and those who are poorly vaccinated.

But the government abruptly ended most of these measures in early December amid growing public exasperation and a huge impact on the economy. 

The number of cases has since exploded, raising fears of high mortality among the oldest.

A “change in the situation” which greatly worries the World Health Organization (WHO), its chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Wednesday.

This international organization would nevertheless like to receive "more detailed information on the severity of the disease, hospital admissions and needs for intensive care units", he added, believing that China must "focus its efforts on the vaccination of those most at risk”.

Even if it has “made considerable progress in recent weeks in the distribution of vaccines”, admitted Dr. Michael Ryan, the WHO official in charge of managing health emergencies.

A “scientific” methodology

Chinese authorities clarified on Tuesday that only people who died directly from respiratory failure linked to Covid-19 were now counted in the statistics.

This “scientific” methodology, they claim, however, gives a much more restricted view of the situation.

“After infection with the Omicron variant, the main cause of death (of patients) are underlying diseases,” defended Wang Guiqiang, a health official in the city of Beijing.

“Only a small number” of people affected “die directly from respiratory failure caused by Covid-19”, he insisted.

This change in methodology means that “very many deaths will not be listed” as being due to Covid, reacted Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious disease expert working in Singapore.


The Omicron variant does not attack the lungs as much as other strains of Covid-19, noted health expert Yanzhong Huang of the Council on International Relations, an American think tank.

“This new definition is a reversal of the international standard which prevailed” and under which is counted “As dead from Covid-19 any person who died with Covid-19”, noted Huang.

According to him, “difficult to say that this is not motivated by political considerations.

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According to official data, only seven patients have died from Covid-19 since restrictions were lifted in early December.

A figure finally reduced to six Wednesday by the authorities, who did not provide any explanation.

World

Covid-19 in China: Beijing no longer counts deaths linked to underlying diseases of the coronavirus

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Covid-19 in China: First deaths since the easing of certain restrictions and the end of "zero Covid"

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