Officials have been tight-lipped for more than a year about the number of pneumonia deaths in Wuhan, China, caused by the new pneumonia virus.
China’s Caixin Online on Friday cited a CDC study that said the death rate in Wuhan was 56 percent higher than expected, sparking renewed speculation and heated debate among the public. However, the report has been removed.
Officials have been tight-lipped for more than a year about the number of pneumonia deaths in Wuhan, China, caused by the new pneumonia. Caixin.com posted an article on Friday (Feb. 26), which was titled “Total mortality rate at the beginning of the Epidemic: CDC study says Wuhan 56% higher than expected, no increase outside Wuhan”, mentioning that: in the first three months of 2020, the overall mortality rate in Wuhan was 56% higher than expected, the number of deaths due to pneumonia increased 8 times, the number of deaths from Cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and other non-communicable diseases rose, other Hubei regions have lower than expected traffic accident death rates and no increase in overall death rates in other regions outside of Wuhan. A screenshot of the article was widely circulated in WeChat groups.
Zhang Hai, a Family member of a victim of Wuhan New Crown pneumonia.
Our reporter logged on to Caixin.com and found that the article had been deleted, with the page showing the number “404, the page you want to view does not exist or has been deleted”, a result that drew more interest from netizens of the article. In an interview with Radio Free Asia on Wednesday, Zhang Hai, a Wuhan resident and family member of the victims of the new pneumonia, who has been pursuing the truth about the deaths caused by the pneumonia in Wuhan, said he has been questioning the concealment of the death toll by government officials: “When Wuhan was closed and when the epidemic broke out in Wuhan in the early days, the death rate was definitely very high, but the local government, including the Hubei provincial government, and the Chinese government announced the death toll to the public. The numbers are very, very low. As far as I know, many people died at Home because they had contracted the new crown and were unable to get a nucleic acid test and could not go to the hospital, so the death certificate was written as ‘sudden death’, and there are many such examples in Wuhan.”
Many deaths were categorized as ‘sudden death’
Wuhan officials announced last year that Wuhan pneumonia had led to nearly 3,000 deaths, a figure widely questioned by outsiders after officials revised the death toll upward to 3,869, only to raise questions again. Zhang Hai said in response, “I always think that the figures announced are very watery, the so-called expected number of deaths, are very vague terms. Confuse everyone.”
Left: Caixin.com’s report on the Wuhan epidemic. Right: Caixin’s report on the epidemic in Wuhan was removed by “404”. (Web screenshot)
In an article similar to the Caixin.com report last week, the Southern Weekend said the study was conducted by researchers from the Chinese CDC and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, among other institutions. The study showed that Wuhan had about 6,000 more deaths in the same period in 2020 compared to the first quarter of 2019, more than half of which were caused by new crowns, with the deceased mainly in the older age group of more than 70 years old.
Wuhan resident Xu Yang told the station that the CDC study deliberately hides the “expected number of deaths” so that you can’t estimate the true number of deaths: “He doesn’t give you a reference number, but also doesn’t want you to know the exact number of deaths, so you can’t draw a conclusion. But it’s certainly more than 56 percent from residents receiving urns, which is a very objective figure.”
In late December of last year, the CDC released findings showing that after testing 34,000 community people in Wuhan for serum neo-coronavirus antibodies in April of the same year, the positive rate for neo-coronavirus in the area’s population was 4.43 percent. Wuhan has a resident population of over 11 million people, so if we estimate 4.43%, the number of people infected with NIV in Wuhan alone should be close to half a million. However, the Wuhan health department announced last April that there were only 50,000 confirmed cases of Newcastle pneumonia, a difference of nearly ten times.
Recent Comments