The way China classifies coronavirus cases and reports deaths is obscuring the true impact of the Omicron wave and complicating its public health response more than two years into the pandemic, according to medical experts.
Authorities have reported more than 443,000 cases since March 1 and only two deaths, both in the northeastern province of Jilin. No fatalities have been recorded in Shanghai, despite the city of 26mn reporting more than 20,000 daily cases for almost two weeks. Several Shanghai residents have also told the Financial Times that their relatives died after testing positive for Covid-19.
Experts believe the low official toll is the result of shortcomings in the way China counts deaths, and that more people have been killed by the virus.
Accurately estimating the number of Covid-related fatalities is difficult given doubts about official case numbers, uncertainty about vaccine efficacy, and a lack of publicly available data on overall Chinese mortality, the experts added.
Questions about the data could revive criticism of the Chinese government’s handling of the pandemic after Beijing was accused of underplaying the initial spread of the virus in Wuhan in early 2020.
Jin Dong-yan, a virologist at Hong Kong University, said mainland China took a different approach from places such as the US or Hong Kong, where people who died after contracting Covid-19 were included in official death data.
Jin said Chinese hospitals tended to focus on chronic illnesses such as cancer, heart disease or diabetes as the cause of death even when people had contracted the virus, and people with such conditions would not be included in official Covid mortality statistics.
“The numbers are not accurate, but Shanghai hospitals are not necessarily doing this on purpose. From the start, China had this method of recording deaths,” he said.