Beijing: China on Tuesday said it has changed how it defines a Covid-19 death, all but confirming speculation that the government is hiding the true nature of the ongoing outbreak that has led to overflowing crematoriums, flooded clinics, and a massive crunch for essential medicines in the country.
Experts and officials in other countries began to express concern that this could threaten the precarious control the world has gained over the coronavirus, with an unchecked or an understated situation in China potentially giving rise to new variants.
“When it comes to the current outbreak in China, we want to see this addressed,” US state department spokesperson Ned Price said in a briefing late on Monday.
“We know that anytime the virus is spreading in the wild that it has the potential to mutate and to pose a threat to people everywhere.”
On Tuesday, Chinese authorities said they 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 that 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.
This is different from what other countries, including India, follow and China’s older policy, according to which anyone who died while Covid-positive, no matter their underlying condition, would be classed as an official Covid death.
{{/usCountry}}This is different from what other countries, including India, follow and China’s older policy, according to which anyone who died while Covid-positive, no matter their underlying condition, would be classed as an official Covid death.
{{/usCountry}}The shift comes at a time when the rapid rise in cases has come with very few deaths, putting China at odds with the experiences of other countries — and even Shanghai and Hong Kong — and fuelling concerns officials are seeking to mask the real number of fatalities.
The country 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 parlours, particularly in the capital of Beijing, as being overwhelmed.
From the country’s northeast to its southwest, crematorium workers told AFP they are struggling to keep up with a surge in deaths.
In Chongqing - a city of 30 million where authorities this week urged people with mild Covid symptoms to go to work -- one worker told AFP their crematorium had run out of space to keep bodies.
“The number of bodies picked up in recent days is many times more than previously,” a staffer who did not give their name said. “We are very busy, there is no more cold storage space for bodies,” they added.
“We are not sure (if it’s related to Covid), you need to ask the leaders in charge.”
In the southern megapolis of Guangzhou, an employee at one crematorium in Zengcheng district told AFP they were cremating more than 30 bodies a day.
“We have bodies assigned to us from other districts. There’s no other option,” the employee said. Another crematorium in the city said they were also “extremely busy”.
“It’s three or four times busier than in previous years, we are cremating over 40 bodies per day when before it was only a dozen or so,” a staffer said.
“The whole of Guangzhou is like this,” they added, stressing that it was “hard to say” whether the surge in bodies was linked to Covid.
In the northeastern city of Shenyang, a staff member at a funeral services business said the bodies of the deceased were being left unburied for up to five days because crematoriums are “absolutely packed”.
‘Potential to mutate’
Health agencies, including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have been on the lookout for new variants such as delta or omicron as Covid-19 waves hit different countries around the world. New variations “allow the virus to spread more easily or make it resistant to treatments or vaccines,” according to the CDC.
The US state department official also flagged the larger risk to the global economy from China’s outbreak. The US — which is sending a delegation led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing early in the new year — hopes China can get its current Covid-19 outbreak under control in part because any further blow to the Asian nation could further harm the global economy.