China has moved to a narrower definition of Covid deaths, which will drastically cut its death statistics as cases increase following the relaxation of the zero-Covid rule.

Authorities reported no new fatalities in the latest Covid statistics update on Wednesday, despite widespread reports and images of overloaded hospitals and crematoriums and queues of hearses. 

The official number of deaths since the pandemic began in Wuhan three years ago now stands at 5241 – an extremely low number compared with many less populous countries.

The infectious disease expert Prof Wang Guiqiang told a State Council news conference that the National Health Commission had recently revised its guidelines,  classifying only fatalities caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure in patients who had the virus as "Covid deaths".

"Deaths caused by other diseases such as cardiovascular or cerebrovascular diseases and heart attacks are not classified as deaths caused by coronavirus," Wang said.

He said that compared with the first outbreak of Covid-19 in early 2020, when most patients died of respiratory failure, "the main cause of death from infection with Omicron is the underlying diseases. Respiratory failure directly caused by the new coronavirus infection is rare."

But the new method is at odds with World Health Organization (WHO) guidance, which says many countries now use "excess mortality" as a more accurate measure of the true impact of the pandemic.

Excess mortality is defined as the difference in the total number of deaths in a crisis compared with those expected under normal conditions. China’s new method of tallying Covid deaths that excludes underlying diseases would make it difficult to compare fatalities with other countries.

Benjamin Mazer, an assistant professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University, said the classification would miss "a lot of cases", especially as people who are vaccinated, including with Chinese shots, are less likely to die of pneumonia. Blood clots, heart problems and sepsis – an extreme body response to infection – have caused countless deaths among Covid patients around the world.

The Guardian