Covid surge: China’s hospitals, crematorium are filling up | International

China’s narrow criteria for identifying deaths caused by Covid-19 will underestimate the true toll of the pandemic’s current wave there and could make it harder to communicate the best ways for people to protect themselves, foreign health experts warn. Only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after contracting Covid will be classified as having been caused by the coronavirus, a leading Chinese medical expert said on Tuesday.The WHO is also concerned that data coming in from China anecdotally suggests a surge in cases but that spike isn’t reflected in what’s being put out officially. China recently loosened its stringent covid restrictions reducing mandatory testing as it moved away from its Zero-Covid policy, surprisingly at a time Covid numbers were starting to climb.