China confirmed it’s narrowed how it defines a Covid death, adding weight to speculation that its strikingly low official tally is hiding the true picture of the chaos unleashed by this month’s abrupt pandemic pivot.
(Bloomberg) — China confirmed it’s narrowed how it defines a Covid death, adding weight to speculation that its strikingly low official tally is hiding the true picture of the chaos unleashed by this month’s abrupt pandemic pivot.
The country will only count people who tested positive for Covid and died of respiratory failure as official virus deaths, Wang Guiqiang, a top infectious disease doctor, told reporters at a National Health Commission briefing in Beijing on Tuesday. People deemed to have died due to another disease or an event like a heart attack won’t be classified as a virus death, even if they were sick with Covid at the time, he said.
Previously, anyone who died while Covid-positive, no matter their underlying condition, would be classed as an official Covid death. And as recently as last week, the NHC, China’s top health regulator, told Bloomberg News that definition was still in place.
Read more: China Covid Death Reports Spread Amid Virus Data Black Box
Wang’s announcement confirms a Caixin report that the government had quietly changed the guidelines earlier this month, rolling out the narrower definition just as its dismantling of Covid Zero sparked an explosion of infections.
But the rapid rise in cases has notably come with very few deaths, putting China at odds with the experiences of other countries — and even Shanghai and Hong Kong — and fueling concerns officials are seeking to mask the real number of fatalities.
The vast country has reported fewer than 10 deaths since the start of the month, despite a growing chorus of media reports and social media posts that show crematoriums and funeral parlors, particularly in the capital of Beijing, are being overwhelmed.
Omicron vs Wuhan Strain
The change in the definition was sparked by how mild omicron is compared with the Wuhan strain at the start of the pandemic, Wang, a doctor at Peking University First Hospital, said at the briefing aimed at addressing doubts about the accuracy of the death toll.
“Few died from respiratory failure caused by Covid and the most common cause of death is underlying disease,” Wang said. The new definition is now reflected in National Health Commission documents, he said, without elaborating.
Read more: China Reports Two Covid Deaths, But Numbers Don’t Stack Up
Other countries have a wider definition of what constitutes a Covid death. While health authorities in some nations do note that the virus might not be the ultimate cause of death in a positive person, most still include such fatalities in their Covid death tallies. Covid can cause other conditions, like blood clots, that then trigger things like heart attacks, and the virus can also hasten death from another ailment.
The US attributes a death to Covid regardless of whether the infection is the underlying cause or a contributing factor. New Zealand will record a Covid death in anyone who dies within 28 days of a positive test result. The UK, meanwhile, determines whether a death is due to Covid or just involves Covid based on the underlying cause, but both kinds of fatalities will still be recorded as Covid deaths in official statistics.
China’s change not only means its death tally likely won’t be comparable with other countries, but also with the fatalities it recorded at other stages of the pandemic. China has reported 5,242 official Covid deaths since the pandemic began.
(Updates with how other countries define Covid deaths from ninth paragraph.)
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