China’s COVID-related death toll much higher

On Saturday, China’s National Health Commission updated its COVID-related death toll since Dec. 8 from 37 to nearly 60,000. The total death toll due to respiratory failure from COVID-19 also more than doubled to 10,775 deaths. The COVID-related deaths were mainly people over 65 years old, and the vast majority had cancer, heart and lung diseases, or kidney problems. The updated count only included people who died in the hospital, meaning the actual death toll could be higher.

Why the massive increase? The World Health Organization has been calling on China to update its COVID-19 information after city and provincial government reports suggested hundreds of millions of people could have contracted COVID-19 since early December. China began relaxing some of its strict “zero COVID” policies in recent months. Since then the number of people attending fever clinics surged, peaking at 2.9 million people on Dec. 23.

Dig Deeper: Read Erica Kwong’s report in the World Tour about travel restrictions for people coming from China.