1.87 Million Excess Deaths Occurred After End of China’s Zero-COVID Restrictions: Study

A woman holds a picture frame of a loved one at a crematorium in Beijing on Dec. 20, 2022. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

An estimated 1.87 million excess deaths occurred in the first two months after communist China abruptly ended its draconian “zero-COVID” restrictions in December last year, according to a new U.S. study.

The study by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle states that excess deaths occurred among individuals aged 30 and above, which were observed across all provinces in China except for Tibet.

The study was published in JAMA Network Open on Aug. 23.

The researchers found that the number of excess deaths far exceeded official data released by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime, which said that 60,000 COVID-related deaths were recorded from early Dec. 2022 to Jan. 12, 2023.

“Our study of excess deaths related to the lifting of the zero COVID policy in China sets an empirically derived benchmark estimate. These findings are important for understanding how the sudden propagation of COVID-19 across a population may impact population mortality,” the researchers stated.

According to the study, the estimated figure was derived from an analysis of obituary data published by three Chinese universities and index searches on Baidu—China’s largest internet search engine.

“Given the absence of comprehensive, publicly available data from China, our novel strategy for estimating excess deaths is both timely and important on this topic of public health concern both in China and internationally and demonstrates how the strategic combination of data sources can provide insights into seemingly opaque public health research questions,” it stated.

The sudden lifting of the stringent lockdowns on Dec. 7, 2022, reportedly led to a new round of COVID-19 outbreaks across the country—starting from the end of 2022 to the first quarter of this year—due to a lack of preparedness, medical resources, and failure to warn the public.

Patients are cared for by relatives and medical staff as they are seen on beds set up in the atrium area of a busy hospital in Shanghai, China, on Jan. 13, 2023. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

China stopped reporting official daily death results at the end of 2022. The World Health Organization (WHO) asserted earlier this year that China’s COVID-19 data unrepresented the number of hospitalizations and fatalities caused by the disease.

According to the WHO, there have been 121,628 COVID-related deaths in the country, out of a total global toll of almost 7 million.

Global health experts have repeatedly called on China to reveal more data as reports of rising hospitalizations and deaths started to surface.

New COVID-19 Variant

The new strain, EG.5, has become the dominant COVID infection in many provinces in mainland China, China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on the Chinese social media platform WeChat on Aug. 19.

The Eris variant of Covid-19 has become dominant in China. Photo: AP

“EG.5’s prevalence is mainly due to its enhanced ability to escape immunity, reducing the neutralizing ability of antibodies produced by previous infections,” the health agency said.

EG.5, also known as Eris, is a subvariant of the Omicron XBB.1.9.2. It has spread to at least 52 countries since it was first detected in Indonesia in February. The variant is causing COVID-19 infections to surge around the world, with the WHO classifying it as a “variant of interest.”

“The proportion of the EG.5 variant among circulating strains of the coronavirus grew from 0.6 percent in April to 71.6 per cent in August,“ China’s CDC said. ”It has become the dominant strain in most provinces in China and is likely to continue this trend.”

The prevalence of EG.5 in China from July 17 to July 23 rose to 45 percent from 24.7 percent, according to data previously released by the WHO.

Alex Wu, Sophia Lam, and Reuters contributed to this report.