As China celebrates the ‘Year of the Rabbit’, Covid situation in the country has also escalated. The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention disclosed the data of Covid related deaths in China. As per the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, 12,660 deaths were recorded so far in just a week’s time, in between January 13 and 19. However, this came after National Health Commission’s earlier comment stating (citing the data of number of people visiting the fever clinics across China) that peak has already been gone. Just a week ago, China has announced nearly 60,000 deaths due to the COVID-19.
As per the reports, 680 deaths occurred due to the respiratory failure, whereas, 11,980 deaths occurred due to other reasons along with having Covid infection. Chinese government tries to make distinction between those who died directly due to respiratory failure and to those dying with some other disease with addition to Covid infection in order to project lesser no. of deaths due to Covid. Many of the analysts have also warned that the death tolls could be much higher than what Beijing has projected so-far as China is not transparent regarding the Covid situation.
Organization (WHO) has urged Beijing to provide more information regarding Covid related situation in the country. WHO along with the USA has asked Beijing to be more transparent regarding the Covid situation. However, China not only stopped the reporting of Covid related death tolls and infection rates but also relaxed the Covid measures due to the ongoing festive season.
Many analysts have already denounced China’s relaxation of Covid related measures and had warned Beijing that relaxations during the New Year festival time would only worsen the situation. However, China not only curbed the measures but also allowed the movements of millions of people across China on the occasion of Chinese New Year. As reported by Reuters, many health experts from British-based health data firm ‘Airfinity’ predicted that the death toll can go as high as 36,000 a day, claiming more than one million people from the disease in China this year.