In February, China declared a “decisive victory” in its response to the coronavirus, citing a lower death rate compared to other countries. According to the government’s official tally, the total death toll was 83,150 (as of February 9), which makes China the lowest death rate per capita of any other major country. That’s 6 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 337 in the United States. 307 in England.
But researchers studying the pandemic say China is significantly underestimating the number of deaths from the disease. The New York Times report brought together four separate academic studies examining China’s latest coronavirus wave, which accelerated after the government eased zero-corona restrictions in December. They all pointed to similar results, noting that the wave could have killed between 1 million and 1.5 million people.
There is no way to confirm China’s official death toll, but researchers say authorities’ counting of deaths is incomplete because it only counts people who die in hospitals, not people who die at home. It states that it was. Many epidemiologists, including those at Fudan University in Shanghai, have noted gaps in the data and developed models based on past outbreaks to determine how the virus spreads through China’s population.
Lauren Ansel Myers, a professor of biology and statistics at the University of Texas at Austin, told the New York Times, “If the data speaks for itself what we think, this was an explosive wave.” .
