China's low Covid death count could just be data manipulation
Dec 20, 2022
Beijing [China], December 20 : China has not been reporting Covid related fatalities since December 4. The ground reality about the number of bodies at funeral homes in major cities questions China about trying to hide Covid-19 data from the world, The Straits Times, an English-language daily broadsheet newspaper based in Singapore reported.
Just after the protests in China against the Covid-Zero Policy authorities revoked the measures that were placed to control the disease. The move, however, brought Beijing to the doorstep of the most critical Covid outbreak of the last 3 years.
The last Covid 19 fatality in Beijing, which was seeing thousands of Covid positive cases before the revocation of the Zero Covid policy was on November 23. It was an 87-year-old woman that authorities reported had a critical heart condition, according to The Straits Times.
After it, China stopped reporting asymptomatic patients which is a major part of the Covid tally. The country also scrapped the once common Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing apparatus and instead used rapid antigen kits which are known to be a little inaccurate. This pointed out that the data was altered or stood meaningless, according to The Straits Times.
The Straits Times reported, China officially as of now has reported just 5235 Covid related deaths since the pandemic started. This became the opportunity for Chinese President Xi Jinping to taunt the United States which reported more than a million deaths in its official data.
This would help the authorities propagate the image that they have handled the disease's spread well. Although the lower vaccination rates for old aged people in China show a different picture compared to the countries that had opened after they were able to open after they tackled Covid-19.
According to The Straits Times, while projections vary, China could see almost 1 million deaths from Covid-19 as it finally reopens, according to a report by researchers in Hong Kong last Thursday. Modelling by the US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation shows fatalities could top 1 million people through 2023 as the abrupt reversal on Covid Zero results in a surge.
The deaths after the Covid measures are lifted raised questions among the people. There are those, who are searching and asking questions on social media platforms like Weibo about the death rate in Beijing. Relating it to long queues at funeral homes. The official Covid-19 death toll was revised up by some 1,290 fatalities in April 2020, boosting the tally in one go by 40 per cent, according to the report in The Straits Times.
Such manipulation of fatality-related data in China can however affect the world's supply of goods because these deaths will change Chain's workforce drastically.
