Nearly 15,000 people a day are dying from COVID-19 infections in China, according to modeling by British health analytics firm Airfinity.
The London-based company's latest estimate, updated on Wednesday, put daily infections at 2.27 million in the world's most populous country, and daily deaths at 14,700. China's first nationwide COVID wave would likely peak on January 13 at 3.7 million cases a day, the group predicts.
China abruptly abandoned its stringent zero-COVID policy on December 7, ending lockdowns, reducing quarantine times and winding down its mass testing regimen. Its top public health experts believe the government no longer has the means to accurately track what many suspect is the largest outbreak anywhere since the pandemic began three years ago.
A change in reporting criteria, to exclude COVID-positive patients who die with preexisting conditions, means the government's official statistics will remain largely meaningless until it revises its data in the future based on retrospective analysis, as it did in 2020.
The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported five new COVID deaths on Wednesday for January 3, figures that have been called into question by the Chinese public for contradicting experiences on the ground. China's three-year death toll stands at 5,258, but Airfinity believes there have been 176,500 cumulative deaths since December 1 alone.
In a recent virtual meeting with Chinese experts, the World Health Organization called for more transparency, including the real-time disclosure of genetic sequencing data, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths, "to help China and the global community to formulate accurate risk assessments and to inform effective responses."
Based on Airfinity's model, the peak of China's first wave could arrive one week before the Lunar New Year. In pre-pandemic times, nearly half a billion people typically traveled across the country by air, rail and car during the holiday.
Airfinity projects daily deaths to reach an approximate high point of 25,000 about 10 days after the January 13 peak, "by that stage a total of 584,000 since the virus began surging across the country in December."
A second wave of infections is expected to peak on March 3, with 4.2 million cases a day, according to its model. "We predict 1.7 million deaths across China by the end of April 2023," said the analysis, which drew from provincial data and growth rates in Hong Kong and Japan.
"China has stopped mass testing and is no longer reporting asymptomatic cases. The combination means the official data is unlikely to be a true reflection of the outbreak being experienced across the country," Louise Blair, Airfinity's head of vaccines and epidemiology, said in a press statement last month, before Beijing also ceased publishing symptomatic infections.
"China has also changed the way it records COVID-19 deaths to only include those who die from respiratory failure or pneumonia after testing positive. This is different to other countries that record deaths within a time frame of a positive test or where COVID-19 is recorded to have attributed to the cause of death. This change could downplay the extent of deaths seen in China," she said.
Do you have a tip on a world news story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about China? Let us know via worldnews@newsweek.com.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
John Feng is Newsweek's contributing editor for Asia based in Taichung, Taiwan. His focus is on East Asian politics. He ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
