New accusations have been made regarding China’s plans to handle data related to the coronavirus (COVID-19). According to a Financial Times investigation, one of the country’s most populated provinces altered mortality data that showed the significant number of deaths brought on by Beijing’s relaxation of Covid rules at the end of the previous year.
According to statistics released by Zhejiang province on Thursday, which showed that the number of cremations in the affluent coastal region during the first quarter of the year increased by 73% from a year earlier to 171,000, the story published on Tuesday (July 18) by FT made reference to these figures.
The figure was much higher than the 99,000 and 91,000 deaths reported over the same time period in 2022 and 2021, respectively. Following the data announcement, Chinese social media was ablaze, and Zhejiang removed the figures offline by Monday.
Experts have been criticising Beijing for its questionable pandemic data since the outbreak began. When the first known case was identified in China around the end of 2019, it was labelled a public health emergency of worldwide concern in January 2020.
Covid wreaked havoc on humanity, killing millions. To some extent, the world remained wary of the statistics coming from China, since concerns were expressed regarding the transparency and veracity of information concerning Covid’s origin, number of deaths, and other factors.
China and its Covid data
China has relied on tight Covid measures to control the spread of the deadly virus from its inception. Hospitals and crematoria were reportedly overwhelmed with Covid patients when China amended its pandemic policy last December, but Chinese officials have not published reliable numbers that would allow specialists to adequately quantify the impact of the virus’s spread across the population.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) even charged China with exaggerating the severity of its coronavirus outbreak and the true number of deaths. When the Covid limits were lifted, Chinese health officials promised to research and make death statistics available to the public. Concerns about underreporting were rejected.
According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), China did not publicize the number of cremations held last winter in a quarterly report in June. During the height of the Covid outbreak, Beijing withheld a critical indicator of the pandemic death toll.
Despite that promise, the country has yet to reveal any excess mortality statistics, except local-level cremation data, which is the sole publicly available figure for tracking the country’s death toll. However, according to the SCMP article from June, even that data is flawed.