1.媒體來源:
CNN
2.記者署名:
Selina Wang, Nectar Gan
3.完整新聞標題:
As crematoriums fill up, China shifts how it counts Covid deaths
北京火化場爆滿，中國嘗試隱瞞COVID死亡人數
4.完整新聞內文:
中文大意：
北京火化場充滿了因為COVID死亡的屍體袋，
屍體多到放在火化場外的貨櫃箱內，等待火化。
家屬於火化場前等待數日，才等到過世家人的骨灰。
但是中國政府目前定調，要直接因COVID死亡才算在COVID死亡。

貨櫃箱內黃色屍體袋

員工把棺材放入貨櫃內

火化場外排隊
Beijing
CNN
—
For much of the pandemic, images of overflowing hospitals and busy funeral
homes from the United States have featured heavily on China’s
state-controlled television, where the deaths of over a million Americans
from Covid is depicted as a gross failing of Western democracy.
Now, as an unprecedented wave of infections rips through China, its state
media is deliberately ignoring scenes of crowded hospital wards and packed
crematoriums unfolding at home, while officials insist that by the government
’s own count, few people are dying of Covid.
For nearly three years, China’s hardline zero-Covid policy shielded its
population from the kind of mass deaths that haunted Western nations – a
contrast repeatedly driven home by the Communist Party to illustrate the
supposed superiority of its rule.
But as China abruptly abandoned that strategy, with little warning or
apparent preparation, the prospect of surging deaths – projected by some
studies to be as high as one million – has become a thorny issue for a
government that staked its legitimacy on “saving lives.”
Officially, China reported only eight Covid deaths this month – a strikingly
low figure given the rapid spread of the virus and the relatively low vaccine
booster rates among the vulnerable elderly.
The official tally has been met with disbelief and ridicule online, where
posts mourning loved ones dying of Covid abound. Caixin, a Chinese financial
magazine known for its investigative pieces, reported on the deaths of two
veteran state media journalists infected with Covid, on days the official
toll stood at zero.
Other social media posts have described the frustration experienced by many
in attempting to obtain a hearse and the difficulty of securing a slot for
cremation at a funeral home.
When CNN visited a major crematorium in Beijing on Tuesday, the parking lot
was completely packed, with a long line of cars snaking around the cremation
area waiting to get in. Smoke billowed constantly from the furnaces, while
yellow body bags piled up inside metal containers.
Grieving family members waiting in line clutched photos of the deceased. Some
told CNN they had been waiting for more than a day to cremate their loved
ones, who died after contracting Covid. One man told CNN the hospital where
his friend passed away was too full to keep the body, because so many people
had died there. His friend’s body was left on the hospital floor, he said.
In the nearby shops selling funerary items, a florist said she was running
out of stock, and a convenience store owner said business had never been so
busy.
In many parts of the country, crematoriums are struggling to keep up with an
influx of bodies too, according to social media footage.
Outside a Beijing hospital designated for Covid patients, a steady stream of
elderly patients in wheelchairs entered the facility when CNN visited on
Tuesday. A man outside the hospital said space is running out, and he had to
go the night before to register his elderly family member for a bed.
A hazmat-suited worker, who was sorting through yellow bags of medical waste,
said he had been working extra hours in the evening to deal with the surge of
Covid patients. “There is a lot of old people particularly,” he said.
Elderly Covid patients with underlying conditions were dying every day, the
worker said.
Counting Covid deaths
Facing growing skepticism that it is downplaying Covid deaths, the Chinese
government defended the accuracy of its official tally by revealing it had
updated its method of counting fatalities caused by the virus.
According to the latest guidelines from the National Health Commission, only
those whose death is caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after
contracting the virus are classified as Covid deaths, Wang Guiqiang, a top
infectious disease doctor, told a news conference Tuesday.
Those deemed to have died due to another disease or underlying condition,
such as in the event of a heart attack, will not be counted as a virus death,
even if they were sick with Covid at the time, he said.
Commenting on China’s criteria of counting Covid deaths on Wednesday, the
World Health Organization’s emergencies chief Michael Ryan said the
definition was “quite narrow.”
“People who die of Covid die from many different (organ) systems’ failures,
given the severity of infection,” Ryan said. “So limiting a diagnosis of
death from Covid to someone with a Covid positive test and respiratory
failure will very much underestimate the true death toll associated with
Covid.”
According to Wang, the Chinese doctor, the change in the definition was
necessitated by the mild nature of Omicron, which is different from the Wuhan
strain at the start of the pandemic, when most patients died from pneumonia
and respiratory failure.
But Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, pointed out
this is more or less the same strict criteria Chinese authorities have used
to tally Covid deaths all along.
The definition was only slightly broadened in April this year to include some
Covid patients who died of underlying conditions during the Shanghai lockdown
in order to justify the draconian restrictions, Jin said.
During Shanghai’s outbreak from March to May, city officials reported 588
Covid deaths from some 600,000 infections. But once the city’s lockdown
lifted, the nationwide death toll remained at zero for the next six months,
despite the number of infections reaching into the hundreds of thousands.
Then, in late November, Beijing announced three octogenarians had died of
underlying conditions with Covid, just as the city ramped up its own Covid
restrictions amid a widening outbreak.
According to Jin, these inconsistencies reveal China’s method of counting
Covid deaths to be “entirely subjective.” “The death data has been
misleading from the start,” he said.
Counting deaths from Covid versus deaths with Covid has been a topic of
debate worldwide since the start of the pandemic, said Ben Cowling, a
professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong.
Most countries, including the United States, decided it’s too difficult to
evaluate every single death to know whether Covid was a factor, and counted
deaths with Covid in their official death tolls, Cowling said.
But he pointed out the debate over how to count Covid deaths would be
overshadowed by a bigger issue in China – namely, there is very little PCR
testing being done after the government rolled back mass testing.
“We know there’s many, many Covid deaths already occurring. And those are
not being counted with the Chinese method or with the American method,
because the testing is not being done,” he said.
“The substantial reduction in testing would have a greater effect on the
death statistics that we’re going to see in the coming one to two months.”
5.完整新聞連結 (或短網址)不可用YAHOO、LINE、MSN等轉載媒體:
※ 當新聞連結過長時，需提供短網址方便網友點擊
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/22/china/china-covid-deaths-crematorium-intl
-hnk-mic/index.html
https://tinyurl.com/47n3kacp
6.備註:
※ 一個人一天只能張貼一則新聞(以天為單位)，被刪或自刪也算額度內，超貼者水桶，請注意
※ 備註請勿張貼三日內新聞(包含連結、標題等)
原來中國還在搞武漢肺炎？？