A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official has criticized China’s official data for understating the true impact of the coronavirus outbreak in the nation and criticized its “very narrow” definition of COVID deaths.
“We believe that the current numbers being published from China underrepresent the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions, particularly in terms of death,” Mike Ryan, WHO’s emergencies director, told reporters on Wednesday.
The statement came as more countries levied travel restrictions on Chinese visitors in the wake of a significant rise in COVID infections in the country. Since Beijing abruptly lifted more than three years of strict restrictions last month, hospitals and crematoriums have been overwhelmed.
A senior doctor at one of Shanghai’s top hospitals said 70 percent of the megacity’s population may now have been infected with COVID-19, state media reported on Tuesday.
International health experts have predicted at least one million COVID-related deaths in China this year if no urgent action is taken.
Yet China has only recorded 22 COVID deaths since December and has dramatically narrowed the criteria for classifying such fatalities. It counts only those cases that involve COVID-caused pneumonia or respiratory failure – meaning that Beijing’s own statistics about the unprecedented wave are now widely seen as not reflecting reality.
Ryan, the WHO official, pointed out that the definition Beijing is using “requires a respiratory failure” associated with a COVID infection for a death to be registered as a COVID death.
“That is a very narrow definition,” he said.
Ryan noted that for the past three years, China has had some of the world’s harshest rules regarding COVID-19.
“The reality for China is that many countries [now feel] they don’t have enough information to base their risk assessment,” he said.
“We still do not have complete data,” he added.
The UN agency will meet Chinese scientists again on Thursday as part of a wider briefing among member states on the global COVID-19 situation.
Source: Aljazeera news
