All three were unvaccinated and had underlying diseases such as coronary heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, according to officials. The city reported 2,417 symptomatic cases and 19,831 asymptomatic infections on Monday, slightly lower than the previous day, according to the health committee. The death toll appears to be strikingly low compared to the huge number of cases – since March 1, more than 370,000 people in Shanghai have been infected and according to the official count, no one had died by Covid until Sunday. By comparison, the region’s other economic hub, Hong Kong, has recorded nearly 9,000 deaths from Covid from a total of 1.18 million cases as of January this year. Experts attributed the high number of deaths in Hong Kong to the high rate of unvaccinated elderly people. As of early March, only 48% of people aged 70 and over had taken two doses. And at the beginning of this year, only 25% of residents aged 80 and over had been vaccinated. Shanghai’s low official death toll has raised questions among experts outside of mainland China, especially since vaccination coverage among the elderly in Shanghai is not much higher than in Hong Kong. On Monday, Shanghai officials said 62% of city residents over the age of 60 had been fully vaccinated and 38% had received a booster shot. The number of fully vaccinated people over the age of 80 was even lower, at just 15%, according to the Communist Party spokesman, the People’s Daily. Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, said the low death toll in Shanghai was partly due to the way Covid deaths are being counted in mainland China. “The methods used by Hong Kong and the mainland to calculate deaths are completely different. More than 90% of the Covid deaths reported in Hong Kong will not be counted on the mainland,” he said. In Hong Kong, a person is estimated to have died from Covid if it is confirmed that he was infected with the coronavirus less than 28 days before his death – even if he died of suicide or car accidents, Jin said. “On the mainland, if the deceased had underlying diseases, most of them would be blamed for dying from other diseases instead of Covid,” Jin said. In Shanghai, the number of officially diagnosed serious cases is also low. According to Wu Jinglei, director of the Shanghai Health Committee, only 16 serious cases have been hospitalized since Saturday. “One of them has been fully vaccinated, the others have not been vaccinated against Covid-19,” he said. Chinese health officials have noted a high rate of asymptomatic and mild cases in the country’s Omicron epidemic. Wang Guiqiang, an infectious disease doctor in Beijing, said in a government press conference on April 6 that this was because the Omicron variant was less contagious, people were being vaccinated, and active tests had identified many cases early in the period. incubation. However, Wang warned that Omicron is still dangerous for the elderly, especially those who have not been fully vaccinated. This is only the second time that mainland China has reported deaths from Covid this year. Last month, the northeastern province of Jilin reported two deaths – the first in more than a year. Throughout 2021, mainland China reported only two deaths from Covid, both in January. Chinese officials and state media attributed the country’s low death toll to the supposed success of its zero-zero Covid strategy, often comparing it to the hundreds of thousands of deaths reported in Western countries. But increasingly, the low official death toll also raises questions among many Shanghai residents as to whether justifying the kind of austerity measures that have turned millions’ lives upside down is justified. The reported deaths come as the metropolis of 25 million people continues to endure an exhausting lockdown, which has almost frozen the vibrant, bustling business center. Residents have been confined to their homes for three weeks and count, with many complaining of food shortages, lack of medical access, poor conditions in makeshift quarantine camps and harsh measures such as separating infected children from their parents. In China’s heavily censored social media, users have resorted to creative ways to express growing dissatisfaction with prolonged lockdowns, including posting seemingly irrelevant hashtags that provoke hidden criticism or sarcasm. But these hashtags are often censored as well as attracting a lot of attention. On Sunday, the latest censored hashtag on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, is the first line of China’s national anthem: “Get up! These people who refuse to be enslaved!” Additional reports from Simone McCarthy and CNN’s Beijing Office.
