Chinese People Say the CCP Forces Doctors and Community Staff to Not List COVID as Cause of Death

Mourners gather outside the memorial hall for the deceased at a funeral home in Shanghai, China, on Dec. 31, 2022. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Western media have recently reported that doctors in China are discouraged from citing COVID-19 as the cause of death in an attempt to downplay the severity and extent of the ongoing explosive COVID infection wave.

A number of Chinese citizens spoke to the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times and shared their personal stories, saying that the regime orders doctors and community workers to falsify the cause of death on death certificates.

On Jan. 17, Zhang Miao (pseudonym), a community worker in Changchun City, Jilin Province, told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times that she had just prepared a death certificate for a senior resident who passed away from COVID-19.

“The local police chief came to our community office on Jan. 14 and asked me to issue a death certificate for his father-in-law,” Zhang said. “I asked him if the death was caused by COVID-19, and he said yes.”

“Then I explained to him that we received an instruction from above, saying the cause of death can’t be listed as COVID-19,” Zhang said.

She further explained that if the patient died at home, his family first needed to go to the community office to get a death certificate, then present it to a public hospital in exchange for a hospital-issued death certificate. The local police will only acknowledge a hospital-issued death certificate before they will remove the residential registration of the deceased. These steps are necessary before the body of the deceased can be sent to a crematorium.

“However, the thing is, the community cannot state that COVID-19 is the cause of death on the certificate; otherwise the hospital will not issue the formal death certificate. Even if you go back to the community asking for a re-issuance, the hospital won’t give you this chance. You only have one chance to get it ‘right.’ The death certificate I gave to his father-in-law said the elder died of a cerebral infarction,” Zhang said.

Hospitals Ordered to Lie on Death Certificate

Liu Chen (pseudonym), a doctor at a hospital in Dalian, Liaoning Province, told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on Jan. 17 that the government has set a rule that “patients who die due to COVID-19 aggravation of underlying disease(s) cannot be counted as COVID-19 deaths.”

“That is the standard we all have to follow. So from the top to the bottom, no one knows the exact mortality rate of COVID-19. Even for the top authorities, there is no way they can have the exact figures,” he said.

A patient on oxygen is wheeled on a gurney into a busy emergency room at a hospital in Beijing, China, on Jan. 2, 2023. Getty Images

Cheng Ying (pseudonym), a doctor at the Yantai Mountain Hospital, made a similar statement when he spoke to the Chinese language Epoch Times on Jan. 17. “Even our hospital does not have the exact number of people who died from COVID-19 in our facility, as the government does not allow us to register them as COVID-19 deaths.”

Wang Ling (pseudonym), a doctor at another hospital in Yantai, Shandong Province, revealed on Jan. 15 that the number of deaths due to COVID-19 was so large that the Shandong medical system issued an emergency notice forbidding doctors to cite COVID-19 as cause of death.

“As long as there are other underlying diseases, those diseases can be listed as the cause of death. Basically, whatever cause can be cited, other than COVID-19.  Moreover, the doctors must get approval from the hospital authorities on the specific details before filling out a death certificate; they are not allowed to do it on their own.”

Gu Cheng (pseudonym), a resident of Yantai, Shandong Province, told The Epoch Times on Jan. 17 that a friend just lost his father last month.

“His father was hospitalized in Yantai Hospital for the treatment of heart disease in early December last year and was originally scheduled to be discharged in a week. But after the sudden removal of lockdown and restrictions, his father tested COVID positive while still in the hospital, and passed away a few days later. Doctors refused to list COVID-19 as the cause of death, and cited heart disease instead. It’s the same in other hospitals. The doctors are forbidden to list COVID-19 as the cause of death,” Gu said.

Chinese Question the Official Death Toll

China’s National Health and Wellness Commission reported on Jan. 14 that 60,000 COVID deaths occurred between Dec. 8, 2022 and Jan. 12, 2023.

A woman holds a picture of a loved one at a crematorium in Beijing on Dec. 20, 2022. Workers at Beijing crematoriums said on Dec. 16 they are overwhelmed as China faces a surge in COVID cases that authorities warn could hit its underdeveloped rural areas during upcoming public holidays. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

However, the visible explosive wave of infections and the overcrowded funeral homes are telling a different story.

Qu Li (pseudonym), a Beijing resident, told The Epoch Times on Jan. 18 that she saw a very long line of vehicles outside a crematorium.

“My mother passed away after COVID-19 infection. Our wait time for her cremation was a whole week at the Pingfang Crematorium in Chaoyang District, and this was the result of our cutting in line using a personal connection. On the day of the cremation, there were huge crowds of people outside queuing up to get their numbers, and you can’t see the end [of the queue] at a glance. When we left the crematorium, the car drove for a long way and you could still see the people in line,” Qu said.

Qu heard that the same is true at other crematoria in Beijing.

“My brother said that 21 people he knew of recently passed away, including three relatives of my family. None of the death certificates said that these were COVID-19 deaths. The number of recent COVID deaths can be said to be ‘shocking.’ The authorities said 60,000 people died, but I don’t believe it,” she added.

Yang Hai (pseudonym), a resident of Hailun City, Heilongjiang Province, told The Epoch Times on Jan. 17 that his uncle just passed away due to COVID-19 infection.

“Inside the funeral home, there were layers of coffins on the shelves. The employees were transporting some corpses to another crematorium more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) away to be cremated. There are two crematoriums in Hailun City. Both are too busy to handle all the cremation requests because there are so many corpses. The deceased are mostly elderly people, there are also some in their 50s.”

Zhang, the community worker, said she issued five death certificates that day, including the one for the police chief’s father-in-law. On most certificates, she cited heart failure as the cause of death.

“There are three police stations in our area. The police chief told me that he removed 23 deceased from the registration system in one day when he was on duty. If that’s the average number for one police station, wouldn’t there be an average of 70 deaths a day in three police stations?” Zhang said.

China’s State Council  held a press conference on Jan. 17  on the topic of the country’s economy in 2022. When asked about death toll and population data in December,  Kang Yi, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that in non-census years, the time point of population sampling survey is Nov. 1 every year, so there is no data on the number of deaths in December 2022 yet.

He also claimed that the data about the pandemic, including the number of infections and other aspects, is released to the world and shared with the relevant organizations as soon as it is available.

Chinese netizens expressed anger at his remarks. They left comments such as, “With such a strict household registration system that requires timely submission of a death certificate, how come you don’t know the number of deaths?” and ”Now that household information is all online, you should be able to find out the total number of death certificates within your system. How come you claim you don’t have December’s data?”

“The authorities’ claim that they put people first, putting life first is a sheer lie. They falsified COVID-related data when people were under lockdown, and they continued to falsify data when restrictions were removed. They have been lying all along,” Zhang said.