After a top health official stated that the vast majority of the Chinese populace has already been infected by the virus, China reported about 13,000 hospital fatalities linked to covid between January 13 and January 19 across the country.
Since Beijing abruptly removed its strict anti-virus regulations last month, there has been significant skepticism over official data related to the covid deaths. A week earlier, China claimed that approximately 60,000 people had died in hospitals from Covid during the preceding month.
According to a statement released on Saturday by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over the course of the year, 11,977 people died from other diseases that were also caused by infections, including 681 hospitalised patients who passed away from respiratory failure brought about by coronavirus infection.
The statistics only count hospital deaths and do not reflect people who passed away at home due to the infection.
Over the Lunar New Year break, according to British-based health data firm, Airfinity, the number of Covid deaths per day in China could peak at over 36,000.
The company also calculated that since China abandoned the zero-Covid policy in December, more than 600,000 individuals have passed away from the disease.
Last year, Global Times, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece, had insisted “everything is good” despite alarming news from the international media about the rise in Covid cases in China.
Fears of new outbreaks have increased as tens of millions of people have recently travelled across the nation for eagerly anticipated family reunions to commemorate the biggest festival in China, the Chinese New Year as per the lunar calendar.
Although tens of millions of people will return to their villages to celebrate the Lunar New Year, a top health official said that China won’t see a second wave of covid infections in the next two to three months because about 80% of the population has already contracted the virus.
“Although a large number of people travelling during the Spring Festival may promote the spread of the epidemic to a certain extent, the current wave of the epidemic has already infected about 80 percent of the people in the country”, the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s top epidemiologist, Wu Zunyou, stated in a post on the Chinese social media website Weibo on Saturday. He added, “In the short term, for example, in the next two to three months, the possibility of a second wave of the epidemic across the country is very small.”