China announces first Covid-19 death since May — RT World News
An 87-year-old man from Beijing has died of Covid-19, the Chinese National Health Commission announced on Sunday. It is the first death from the virus in the country in nearly six months amid its strict lockdowns, as was the most recent before it was reported in Shanghai in May.
On November 20, China announced that 24,215 new cases of Covid-19 had been detected in the past 24 hours, most of them asymptomatic. There have been 286,197 recorded cases since the virus was first recognized in Wuhan in December 2019, but only 5,227 deaths have been reported.
Some in the West have questioned China’s record keeping, noting that the recent outbreak in Shanghai – which lasted two months and infected hundreds of thousands of people – officially caused only around 20 deaths. Patients who died of serious health conditions like diabetes and heart disease but tested positive for Covid-19 before they died were not counted as Covid-19 deaths, unlike in the United States and Europe.
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However, the practice of counting every death that tests positive for the virus as a Covid-19 case is itself controversial, with some experts saying it amounts to little more than an exaggeration or fearmongering.
China’s “zero-Covid” policy has imposed severe restrictions on movement within the country, imposing lockdowns, quarantines, contact tracing and mass testing to an extent not seen at the start of the pandemic.
Beijing residents have been discouraged from traveling between city districts, while many businesses have been closed and distance learning has continued for children.
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