China\u0027s low COVID death count is being met with disbelief as infections have surged following the easing of restrictions.
Health authorities reported only five COVID-related deaths on Tuesday and two the day before, all of which were in Beijing. Both numbers were met with a wave of disbelief on microblog Weibo. “How come people only die in Beijing? What about the rest of the country?” one user wrote.Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion delivered straight to your inbox at 7 a.m., Monday to Friday.
After authorities last week stopped reporting asymptomatic cases, word of mouth has become the main way many track the outbreak. Social media timelines are a constant stream of positive test results, reversing nearly three years of most people in China having no personal experience with the virus. Hospitals have filled steadily, even as authorities announced measures to increase emergency-care capacity.
It also raised the threshold for considering an individual to be infected by COVID. Patients must be found to have severe hypoxemia or below 93 per cent arterial oxygen saturation levels, both of which would suggest the individual was severely starved of oxygen.The update reflected a “great change” in the nature of deaths from recent variants, said Wang Guiqiang, a government adviser and director of the infectious diseases department at Peking University First Hospital.
Jin noted that some individuals who died of underlying conditions worsened by COVID were counted during an outbreak in Shanghai earlier this year, in what could have been a change “to emphasize that many people would die from COVID” and show why lockdowns were necessary.
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