The British analytics company Airfinity published a report this week estimating some 5,000 people were dying in China a day as a result of Chinese coronavirus infections – a significantly higher number than the seven Chinese government officials admitted to all week.
The scientific estimate, based on analyses of hospitals and cases in the country, preceded a report published Friday by Bloomberg claiming that internal Chinese government documents show a staggering 37,000 coronavirus infections being documented a day in the country.
The Chinese Communist Party subjected its population to a brutal policy known as “zero-Covid” for nearly three years in which it implemented sudden, city-wide lockdowns and forced thousands of people into quarantine camps if testing positive for coronavirus, even if experiencing mild or asymptomatic cases. An untold number of people died of suicide, starvation, and lack of access to health care while the policy was in full vigor, triggering nationwide protests unseen since the pro-democracy movement crushed by the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
In early December, in response to the protests, communist officials announced that they had abruptly found the omicron variant causes less severe disease than previous versions of the Chinese coronavirus – a conclusion international scientists had reached a year ago – and therefore they would stop implementing “large-scale” lockdowns and allow people to forego being imprisoned in quarantine camps. The announcement prompted panic-buying of basic medicines such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen and has, anecdotal evidence suggests, resulted in massive overflow in the nation’s hospitals.
The Chinese government’s official statistics nonetheless do not show any significant spike in cases or deaths. As of Thursday, Beijing claimed to have documented seven coronavirus deaths this week, leaving unclear why such a death rate would result in long lines at funeral homes and overflowing morgues.
The Airfinity study suggested that the true death rate as a result of the virus spreading in the country currently was closer to 5,000 deaths a day in a publication this week. Airfinity also estimated that 1 million new people were being infected by the virus in China a day.
“China has stopped mass testing and is no longer reporting asymptomatic cases. The combination means the official data is unlikely to be a true reflection of the outbreak being experienced across the country,” Louise Blair, Airfinity head of vaccines and epidemiology, said.
Bloomberg on Friday claimed to be privy to Chinese National Health Commission documents showing that the regime believed that somewhere around 37 million people in China had been infected with the virus just this week. The report also claimed that 248 million people had been infected between December 1-20.
A patient is wheeled through the emergency room at the Zhuozhou Hospital in Zhuozhou city of the Baoding prefecture in northern China’s Hebei province on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022. Nearly three years after it was first identified in China, the coronavirus is now spreading through the vast country. Experts predict difficult months ahead for its 1.4 billion people. (AP Photo/Dake Kang)
Multiple reports citing unnamed sources within China suggest that unexplained deaths are rising among prominent Communist Party leaders and other national elites. The anti-communist Epoch Times newspaper reported on Friday that at least ten “famous Chinese medical experts” had died this month from unspecified “illness,” not tallied among the seven identified as dead from coronavirus infections this week.
The publication had also documented a list on Thursday of Communist Party officials reported dead under mysterious circumstances this week.
Some reports indicated that the dead may not be coronavirus victims, but rather dying of issues medical professionals could address normally but did not receive care due to hospitals being overwhelmed. Writing in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, columnist Wang Xiangwei tells the story of a friend who lost his father this week of “sudden cardiac death” after hours of insufficient care from medical professionals.
A man squats outside a treatment room as an elderly person receives help with breathing via a manual ventilator pump at the emergency department of the Baoding No. 2 Central Hospital in Zhuozhou city of Baoding prefecture in northern China’s Hebei province on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022. (AP Photo, File)
“My friend’s 84-year-old father, who had previously had a stroke, became unwell on Monday afternoon,” Wang narrated. After the friend flew hundreds of miles from the southern island of Hainan back to Beijing, he found “his father was still in the ambulance” after being picked up hours prior. “It had been parked in front of the hospital entrance for nearly two hours.”
The father died from “sudden cardiac death” shortly after finally receiving an ICU bed.
The hospital’s morgue was reportedly overwhelmed with bodies.
“In a word, China is woefully underprepared for the chaos that is inevitably unfolding since the controls were lifted, as seen in other countries,” Wang concluded.
In its final press conference of the year on Wednesday, World Health Organization (W.H.O.) leaders expressed worry regarding the little known about the current coronavirus situation in China. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters his agency was “very concerned over the evolving situation in China with increasing reports of severe disease.”
“In order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground, W.H.O. needs more detailed information on disease severity, hospital admissions, and requirements for ICU support,” he said. “W.H.O. is supporting China to focus its efforts on vaccinating people at the highest risk across the country and we continue to offer our support for clinical care and protecting its health system.”
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