- Beijing reports two deaths, the first since December 3
- Comes after Beijing relaxes antivirus controls
- Citizens, analysts question official figures
- The virus flood is weighing on the second economy in the world
BEIJING, Dec 19 (Portal) – China on Monday reported its first COVID-related deaths in weeks, amid mounting doubts over whether the official count captures the full toll of a disease rampaging through cities after the government eased strict antivirus controls Has .
The two deaths on Monday were the first to be reported by the National Health Commission (NHC) since December 3, days before Beijing announced it would lift curbs that have largely kept the virus in check for three years had held but sparked widespread protests over the past month.
On Saturday, however, Portal journalists saw hearses lined up outside a designated COVID-19 crematorium in Beijing and workers in hazmat suits carried the dead into the facility. Portal couldn’t immediately determine whether the deaths were due to COVID.
A hashtag related to the two reported COVID deaths quickly became the top trending topic on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform Monday morning.
“What’s the point of incomplete statistics?” asked a user. “Isn’t that cheating the public?” wrote another.
The NHC did not immediately respond to questions from Portal about the accuracy of its data.
Officially, China has suffered just 5,237 COVID-related deaths during the pandemic, including the last two deaths, a tiny fraction of its 1.4 billion population and very small by global standards.
But health experts have said China may pay a price for taking such strict measures to protect a population that now lacks natural immunity to COVID-19 and has low vaccination rates among the elderly.
Some fear the number of COVID deaths in China could exceed 1.5 million in the coming months.
The respected Chinese news agency Caixin reported on Friday that two state-run media journalists had died after contracting COVID, and on Saturday that a 23-year-old medical student had also died. It was not immediately clear which, if any, of these deaths were included in the official death toll.
“The (official) number is clearly an undercount of COVID deaths,” said Yanzhong Huang, global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a US think tank.
This “might reflect the state’s lack of ability to effectively track and monitor the disease situation on the ground following the collapse of the mass PCR testing regime, but it may also be driven by efforts to avoid a stampede over the rise in COVID deaths.” “. he said.
The NHC reported 1,995 symptomatic infections for December 18, compared to 2,097 the day before.
But infection rates have also become an unreliable guide with far fewer mandatory PCR tests being carried out following the recent relaxation of lockdown. The NHC stopped reporting asymptomatic cases last week, citing the drop in testing.
China’s stocks fell and the yuan weakened against the dollar on Monday, as investors grew concerned rising COVID-19 cases would continue to weigh on the world’s second-largest economy despite pledges of government support.
The virus also swept through trading floors in Beijing and quickly spread to financial hub Shanghai, with illness and absenteeism thinning out already easy trading and forcing regulators to cancel a weekly meeting to review public stock sales.
Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics Corp (6723.T) said Monday it suspended work at its Beijing plant because of COVID-19 infections.
SPREADING FAST
China’s chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou said Saturday the country is in the midst of the first of three COVID waves expected this winter, which is more in line with what people said they were experiencing on the ground.
“I would say sixty to seventy percent of my colleagues … are infected right now,” Liu, a 37-year-old worker at a university canteen in Beijing, told Portal, asking to be identified by his last name.
While senior officials have downplayed the threat posed by the new Omicron virus strain in recent weeks, authorities remain concerned about older people who are reluctant to get vaccinated.
Officially, the vaccination rate in China is over 90%, but the rate for adults who have received booster doses of the vaccine drops to 57.9% and for those aged 80 and over to 42.3%, according to government data.
In Beijing’s Shijingshan district, medics went door-to-door offering to vaccinate elderly residents in their homes, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.
But not only older people are skeptical about vaccinations.
“I don’t trust it,” Candice, a 28-year-old headhunter in Shenzhen, told Portal, citing stories from friends about health effects and similar health warnings on social media. Candice spoke on condition that only her first name be used.
Vaccines developed abroad are not available in mainland China to the general public, which has relied on inactivated inoculations from local manufacturers to launch vaccines.
While China’s medical community generally has no doubts about the safety of China’s vaccines, some say questions remain about their effectiveness compared to foreign-made mRNA counterparts.
Reporting by Liz Lee, Martin Quin Pollard, Eduardo Baptista, Jing Wang and Ryan Woo in Beijing and David Kirton in Shenzhen; writing by John Geddie; Edited by Simon Cameron Moore
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