China says 60,000 people have died of Covid since early December
CNNCNN — Close to 60,000 people have died of Covid in China since the country abruptly abandoned its tight “zero-Covid” policy in early December, a medical official from the National Health Commission told a press conference in Beijing on Saturday. The World Health Organization and the United States have accused China of “under-representing” the severity of its current outbreak, while top global health officials have also urged Beijing to share more data about the explosive spread of Covid in China, where reports have emerged of overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes. The NHC said hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients also peaked on January 5, 2023, when 1.63 million people was hospitalized, and 1.27 million Covid patients were still in hospital as of January 12, Jiao added. “Given the still huge gap between the official count of Covid deaths and the international estimate, I don’t think the revision will quell outside doubts on the government data.” Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, said the revision to China’s death toll “should be the first step towards a more timely, open and transparent sharing of Covid statistics China and the world.