![]() ![]() Some drew on how the virus behaved in past outbreaks in Hong Kong and Shanghai, where data was more reliable, and a few used detailed computer models to simulate the epidemic. Researchers used a variety of approaches to gauge how many people may have been infected and - a crucial question - how effective China’s homegrown vaccines were at preventing death. Two of the estimates were in papers published in academic journals or posted for peer review, while two other analyses were shared by epidemiologists in response to queries from The Times. 7, 2023.Īt the same time, China would rank below Germany, Italy, the United States and other countries where outbreaks accelerated before vaccines became available. Values for other countries are as of Feb. 9, 2022, plus the death counts from the lowest and highest estimates obtained from scientists. Note: Estimates for China were calculated using official cumulative deaths from Jan. Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention The New York Times. But at the estimated levels of mortality, China would already have surpassed official rates of death in many Asian countries that never clamped down as long or as aggressively. The official numbers would give China the lowest death rate per capita of any major country over the entirety of the pandemic. The differences between China’s figures and researchers’ estimates are dramatic. Xi Jinping, the top leader, has portrayed that earlier success as evidence of China’s superiority over the West, a claim that would be hard to maintain with a high death toll. Early in the pandemic, China’s harsh lockdowns largely kept the coronavirus at bay. The question of how many people died has enormous political relevance for the ruling Communist Party. Four separate academic teams have converged on broadly similar estimates: China’s Covid wave may have killed between a million and 1.5 million people.Īll of the researchers consulted by The New York Times cautioned that without reliable data from China, the estimates should be understood as informed guesses, with significant uncertainty - although the estimates fit the evidence far better than the official figures do. While a precise accounting is impossible, epidemiologists have been working to piece together the mystery of the outbreak that accelerated in December. That number is a vast undercount, researchers believe, in part because it only includes infected people who died in hospitals, excluding anyone who died at home. A wave of top scholars died.īut China’s official Covid death toll for the entire pandemic remains strikingly low: 83,150 people as of Feb. Crematories were overwhelmed with bodies. Hints of the surge were everywhere: Hospitals turned away patients. After China relaxed the world’s most stringent Covid-19 restrictions in December, the virus exploded. ![]()
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