China’s sharp drop in COVID-19 deaths has raised new questions about the accuracy of its data.

The speed at which the covid spread among the population China since early December, it has taken the world by storm. Now, the sharp drop in the number of deaths in the country is also causing astonishment.

There was only nine COVID-related deaths in hospitals on February 13, according to the most recent official figures. These are figures that are sharply down from the peak of 4,273 in a single day in early January and it’s the biggest drop in deaths among more than 20 places that faced massive waves of omicron last year.

However, The United States recorded a peak of 2,600 daily deaths in early 2022, and the It took just over a month for deaths to drop to around 1,400. The trend is mirrored in places like Taiwan and the UK, which both saw declines of around 50% over a similar period, although countries like South Africa and India reported declines. which are more like the experience of China.

The sharp drop raises new questions about the accuracy of the published data. Recently, on social media platforms such as Weibo, they questioned the official death toll and urged the government to reveal the true COVID numbers.

China abolished testing when it abandoned the policy of “zero covid” at the end of last year, creating an information vacuum just as a record outbreak hit the population. The country has also narrowed the scope of its definition of COVID death, with the small number of officially reported deaths contrasting with the chaotic scenes of overwhelmed hospitals and crematoria.

The sharp decline led Chinese leaders last week to declare a “decisive victory” over the pandemic, signaling their death rate from COVID, which exceeds anything in the world. The virus is now circulating at low levels and the population of 1.4 billion has “great vitality and momentum to continue”, state media said over the weekend.

The low official death toll isn’t the only way Beijing is weathering COVID. There are signs that authorities are less willing to delve into the origin of COVID, at least publicly.

The director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said recently that he was renewing an initiative for greater China cooperation given the difficulty the group is facing in getting the country’s full participation. China’s Foreign Ministry said it has shared origin-tracing information and updates.

But the more time passes, the harder it is to shed light on what caused the global pandemic, according to the WHO’s technical director for COVID, Marie Van Kerkhove.

“These studies need to be done in China and we need cooperation with our colleagues there,” Van Kerkhove said during a recent WHO briefing.

(With information from Bloomberg)

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