WHO says China’s hospitals filling up fast, worried about ‘real impact’ of COVID
The World Health Organisation’s doctor Michael Ryan has urged China to provide more information about the COVID situation in the country
A worker in a protective suit talks on her phone as residents wearing face masks stand in line for their routine COVID-19 tests at a testing site in Beijing. AP file photo
As cases of COVID infections in China continue to rise, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday said that hospitals in China appear to be filling up amid a new wave of COVID.
Doctor Michael Ryan of WHO pointed out that despite officials saying that the number of cases is “relatively low” in China, Intensive Care Units (ICU) across the country are busy.
The situation in China has worsened since authorities lifted the zero-COVID policy following mass protests staged by citizens.
According to BBC, official figures released by China show that five people died on Tuesday and two on Monday.
However, there’s a lot of scepticism around the real impact of the virus. Dr Ryan has urged China to provide more information about the COVID situation in the country.
“In China, what’s been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling up,” he said.
He added, “We’ve been saying for weeks that this highly infectious virus was always going to be very hard to stop completely, with just public health and social measures.”
Similarly, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has flagged concerns about the unavailability of official data from China and has appealed for specific figures on disease severity, hospital admissions and intensive care requirements.
China changes COVID death definition
The Xi Jinping administration has narrowed down its definition of COVID-related deaths.
The head of infectious diseases at China’s Peking University, Wang Guiqiang said that people with existing medical conditions who are infected by the virus are not being counted under COVID deaths.
On Wednesday, China subtracted one death from its overall death toll, without offering any explanation.
An investigation by The Associated Press showed that officials have been clouding death tallies by applying much narrower and less transparent recording standards.
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