On Tuesday, China reported 7,689 infections and five deaths related to Covid, but analysts have said the real death toll might be in the hundreds of thousands. Airfinity, a British health data organisation, has estimated that 9,000 people in China may be dying from the virus daily.
One Chinese resident, who said his surname was Zhang, described China’s official Covid figures as “totally ridiculous”.
He said: “Four of my close relatives died. That’s only from one family. I hope the government will be honest with the people and the rest of the world about what’s really happened here.”
Photographs and videos posted on social media have shown footage of freshly dug graves and people queueing to register deaths in what is believed to be related to Covid-related deaths.
Videos have suggested that previous quarantine sites under China’s previously strict zero-Covid policy are now being turned into funeral parlours.
A worker at a Chinese Covid facility was reported saying: “There is a severe shortage of crematorium [facilities] in Beijing. There are not enough furnaces.”
He claimed his place of work was about to become “a crematorium with 200 furnaces”.
This week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) criticised China’s “very narrow” definition of Covid deaths and warned the Chinese Government’s official statistics were not showing the true impact of Covid in China.
Global health officials have said they do not have the “complete data” on the Covid death rate in China.
Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergencies director, told the media that the organisation believed that “the current numbers being published from China under-represent the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions, and particularly in terms of deaths”.
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The Chinese Government has also criticised certain countries for their “political” rules on Chinese travellers, as some places now require those coming from China to have proof of a negative Covid test or full vaccination status.
Japan has become the latest country to require testing from Chinese tourists, other countries such as the US, India and the UK have brought in similar measures.
A recent Japanese health ministry tally from Tuesday showed that 53 out of 56 international travellers who tested positive for Covid were from China.
Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said health policies “should not be used for political manipulation, and there should be no discriminatory practice … It should not impact the normal exchange and co-operation of people”.
