How many died when China opened up after the epidemic? 30 times as much as the authorities claim, according to a new report.

“Could a million people die in China without anyone knowing?” The question was asked in the American Journal Atlantic Ocean in March.

At that time, many people realized that China had experienced a very deadly Corona wave. Pictures of the overcrowded crematoriums have been leaked. And the authorities themselves reported that 80 percent of the population had been infected.

But the death toll? The official figure of 60,000 was hardly credible. The real number remained a state secret. Something still is.

But now, a group of researchers have combined what they found from the available information to reveal the real number of deaths.

That number is not a million, as The Atlantic and others estimated in March.

That’s almost twice that.

Read the obituary

In all, 1.87 million more people died in China than expected in the two months after China opened in December 2022. More than 30 times the official figure. This is the conclusion of a report published over the weekend in the journal Research JAMA Network is open.

Research work he leads Joseph Unger. He is a biostatistician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

In total, nearly 7 million deaths have been recorded globally as a result of the Corona pandemic, according to the Ministry of Health Global Health Organization. Only 100,000 of them are registered in China. So the new report tells a completely different story than the official one.

The researchers used different methods to reach this number. Among other things, they compared the number of obituaries with previous time periods. They also measured how often people looked up crematoriums or other things related to disease and death.

The excess mortality rate was greatest among the elderly and was observed in all provinces of China, the researchers wrote in the report.

Uncover the stats

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping abruptly eased coronavirus restrictions in December, the Chinese people were unprepared. The country has recorded almost no cases since the first wave in the spring of 2020, which is largely due to closed borders and very strict infection control rules. Therefore, many seniors choose not to get vaccinated.

Therefore, many assumed that the death rate would be high. But the authorities chose to censor the number of those who actually died. Outside of China, many have tried to find the answer.

In July, the magazine arrived The Economist At number 1.6 million. The starting point was a number that may have been published in error: the number of cremations in Zhejiang Province in the first three months of the year.

The information remained online for a short time before it was removed again. But long enough for it to be discovered by The Economist and others.

The number of cremations in that three-month period reached 171,000, according to these official statistics. It was 73 percent higher than normal. About 5 percent of China’s population over the age of 65 lives in Zhejiang Province. If you assume excess deaths are the same across the country, you end up with 1.6 million.

There are many weaknesses in this type of account, so it should be read with a degree of caution. This also applies to the new search report.

The method is innovative, but also very weak.

This is the opinion of China analyst Bill Bishop, author of the famous newsletter Chinese.

However, he refers to the numbers in the latest report as “shocking”.

The last restrictions are now gone

China has been locked down for almost three years as a result of the coronavirus. It cost the country dearly. The reopening has yet to lead to an economic boom, and the country’s economy is showing significant signs of stalling.

Now the authorities are working hard to get the machines working again. Among other things, the interest rate level has been revised twice in the past month.

And covid? this week Disappears One of the last restrictions in China. It will then be possible to travel to the country without showing a negative corona test.