China Already Works on Monitoring Excess Deaths from COVID: Chief Epidemiologist

CDC needs more time to conduct a comprehensive study: expert

By GT staff reporters

Jan 17, 2023 09:59 PM

A medical expert provides free medical services for an elderly villager in Bangyang Village of Baiyun Township, Rongshui Miao Autonomous County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Oct. 26, 2022. Together with local medical staff, a team of medical experts from south China's Guangdong Province came to Baiyun Township of Rongshui Miao Autonomous County to provide villagers with free medical services. Photo: Xinhua

While the World Health Organization (WHO) said it recommended that China monitor excess mortality from COVID-19 infections to gain a fuller picture of the impact of increasing cases, Chinese officials and experts said that China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) has already been doing this work, but it takes some time to release the relevant data.

Since the epidemic began, China has been openly and promptly sharing relevant information and data with the world in line with the laws, and it continues to share the genome data of the virus via the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data, making an important contribution to global vaccine and drug development, Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a routine press conference on Tuesday. 

China has announced the latest figures of epidemic-related deaths, as the National Health Commission (NHC) revealed on Saturday a total of 59,938 COVID-19-related deaths between December 8, 2022 and January 12 this year. The commission explained that China has insisted on classifying the deaths of patients with a positive nucleic acid test as COVID-19-related deaths, which is in line with WHO and international standards.

There is a calculation in the public health sector called "excess deaths", which can assess the possible underestimation, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of the China CDC, said at a recent event. 

After the outbreak began in 2020, China CDC team quickly analyzed possible excess deaths caused by the epidemic and published the results. "The team has already been calculating the possible 'excess deaths' caused by the latest outbreak, which will be provided to the public soon," he said.

Many deaths that did not report in medical institutions, or those that had not be verified as to being related to COVID-19 due to lack of nucleic acid testing, have not been included in the statistics.

Also, some deaths appear unrelated to the COVID infections but have a certain correlation such as other disease treatment being delayed, and the overall understanding of excess deaths requires more comprehensive information and assessment of more comprehensive social costs caused by the epidemic, Chen Xi, an assistant professor of public health at Yale University, told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

"However, compared with the number of deaths in hospitals that can generally be counted immediately, the statistics for excess deaths have a certain lag. In many countries, the excess deaths are greater than the government-declared deaths," Chen said. 

It takes weeks or months to have a comprehensive assessment, and excess deaths and deaths reported by medical institutions should be complementary, the expert said. The assessment of excess deaths is more important to evaluate losses in a general way, while deaths reported by medical institutions are important for allocating resources and adjusting epidemic measures, Chen said. 

However, some Western media and observers have been slandering China for not revealing accurate COVID-related data, claiming that it undercounted the overall deaths and infections. 

Liang Wannian, head of China's COVID-19 response expert panel under the NHC, said in a recent panel discussion that rather than focusing on the death toll in China caused by COVID-19, the priority for the world is to get through the impact of the pandemic. He noted that calculating the specific number of deaths caused by COVID-19 is not feasible for most countries and regions.

In response to some media reports that China has been playing down the number of deaths caused by COVID, Liang was quoted in media reports as saying that it is hard to obtain an accurate grasp of the death rate during peak infections. 

Such assessments can only be made after the infection ebbs, and the current situation means China should focus on preventing severe and fatal cases, he said.