How to Hide COVID Death Toll; China Shows the Way

Despite strict restrictions of the Chinese government on the dissemination of news, social media is agog with reports and video clips depicting the sudden surge in COVID infection and deaths in the country. But the official figure of deaths due to COVID-19 in China is still too low.

This is because the Communist regime of Xi Jinping-led country has changed the definition of COVID-related deaths. In most countries, any death in which Covid-19 is a contributing factor is counted as ‘COVID-related death’. But it is not so in China.

According to medical experts, patients dying of pre-existing medical conditions are not counted as COVID-19 deaths in China. So, the death toll due to the COVID pandemic always stayed low in China.

On Wednesday China subtracted one death from its overall COVID death toll to make it 5,241. But no explanation was provided for this reduction in the death number.

When people with other ailments die after coronavirus infection, they are never accepted to have died of COVID. When patients have underlying diseases, the deaths are attributed to those. So, China’s COVID death toll will always remain significantly lower than many other nations.

US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has predicted that one million deaths due to COVID-19 may occur in China in 2023.

According to an estimate by the World Health Organisation, nearly 15 million people died from Covid-19 or due to overwhelmed health systems in the first two years of the pandemic. That is more than the official death toll of over 6 million for that period.