China's national health authority has set strict criteria on COVID-linked deaths in the country.
The two fatalities, which were recorded in Beijing in the 24 hours of December 18, were the first deaths attributed to the virus since December 3. Before that, the National Health Commission reported only 11 COVID-related deaths among China's 1.4 billion people since November 19., one of China's main social media websites, the hashtag"Beijing reports 2 additional deaths" had been read 460 million times at the time of publication.
The official figure was in stark contrast to the lived experiences of many in Beijing, a city of 22 million people, where pharmacies have reported a run on, hospitals have been overwhelmed, and millions are thought to have already caught and recovered from the highly transmissible Omicron strain. Near-empty shelves of medicine are seen at a pharmacy amid the COVID pandemic in Beijing on December 17, 2022. Some people are questioning the official data.Over the weekend, funeral homes and crematoriums in the Chinese capital told news outlets including Reuters and thethat their staff were struggling to handle the influx of dozens of confirmed or suspected COVID victims each day, while the NHC's official count remained at zero.
"You know the data is inaccurate. I also know the data is inaccurate. The data cannot possibly be accurate. What's the point of reporting the data?" one Weibo user said of Monday's two COVID deaths. Another commenter said the number was"missing at least three zeros." But Beijing also wasn't the only city scrambling to properly track infections. In Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province, the municipal health authority said 43 positive cases were recorded on December 16, and on the same day a single hospital's fever clinic admitted more than 600 COVID-positive patients, according to the
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