China announces almost 60,000 Covid-related deaths between December 8 and January 12

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The National Sanitary Commission of

has announced this Saturday a total of 59,938 deaths related to

between December 8, when the authorities began to relax the restrictions they maintained against the pandemic, and January 12 of this year.

According to agency officials, the average age of the deceased registered in medical centers was

the Global 'Times' newspaper reported today.

Likewise, 90.1% of the deceased were over 65 years of age, and more than 90% suffered from underlying diseases, according to the Commission.

The agency clarified that it performs PCR tests to classify patient deaths as related to Covid, and that the causes of deaths from the virus were

(5,503) or

that worsen after developing covid (54,435). The agency He also assured this Saturday that serious cases of covid in the current outbreak spread throughout the country reached their

on

, about three weeks after the authorities relaxed the 'zero covid' policy that they had maintained until then.

That day there were 128,000 serious cases and on the 12th it dropped to 105,000 serious cases, according to commission officials.

The rapid spread of the virus in China in recent weeks has cast doubt on the reliability of official figures, which until now have reported only a handful of recent deaths from the disease despite numerous scenes of high-pressure hospitals.

The director general of the

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, assured last week that China is not giving complete numbers of deaths from covid in the current outbreak, which prevents knowing the true scope of the disease even to global level. China defends that it has shared its data "in an open, timely and transparent manner" since the start of the pandemic, and has asked the international community to avoid "politicizing the pandemic" as a result of the restrictions imposed on travelers from of the Asian country, such as the requirement of some countries to present PCR tests before traveling.

According to a study by Peking University, around 900 million people have already been infected with Covid-19 in China after the country dismantled the 'zero covid' policy and opted for more lax control of the pandemic. However, other Chinese experts believe that the peak incidence of covid cases in China will continue "until February or March", as recently predicted by the former chief epidemiologist of the China Center for Disease Control Zeng Guang.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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