Keep us in loop, World Health Organisation tells China on Covid outbreak

The World Health Organization (WHO) appealed to China to continue to release information on Covid infections in the country. This comes after Beijing announced that nearly 60,000 Covid-related deaths were recorded since early December when the stringent ‘zero-Covid’ policy was dismantled following weeks of rare protests across the country.

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The first official death toll since the abrupt dropping of restrictions showed that 5,503 people died of respiratory failure caused by Covid and there were 54,435 fatalities from cancer, heart disease and other ailments combined with Covid between December 8 and January 12.

Following this, the World Health Organisation said that the announcement “allows for a better understanding of the epidemiological situation." adding that WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, talked by phone with China's Health Minister Ma Xiaowei.

“WHO requested that this type of detailed information continued to be shared with us and the public,” the agency said. Experts have also slammed China's narrow definition of deaths due to coronavirus as the National Health Commission said only deaths in hospitals were counted, which means anyone who died at home wouldn’t be included.

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A health official said the “national emergency peak has passed” based on an 83% decline in the daily number of people going to fever clinics from a December 23 high, Reuters reported. With this, China's official death toll has more than doubled to 10,775 since the disease was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.