Six doctors at public hospitals across China said they had received iinstructions discouraging them from attributing deaths to COVID or were aware that their hospitals had such policies.
Beijing | During a busy shift at the height of Beijing’s COVID-19 wave, a physician at a private hospital saw a printed notice in the emergency department: doctors should try not to write COVID-induced respiratory failure on death certificates.
Some relatives of people who have died with COVID say the disease did not appear on their death certificates, and some patients have reported not being tested for coronavirus despite arriving with respiratory symptoms. China’s Centre for Disease Control and National Health Commission did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The doctors declined to be named because they are not permitted to speak to the media.
Before Saturday, China was reporting five or fewer COVID deaths per day. Of the nearly 60,000 COVID-related fatalities since December 8 it announced on Saturday, fewer than 10 per cent were caused by respiratory failure because of COVID. The rest resulted from a combination of COVID and other diseases, Jiao Yahui, head of the Bureau of Medical Administration under the NHC, said.
The World Health Organisation on Monday recommended that China monitor excess mortality to gain a fuller picture of the impact of the surge in COVID.
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