Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/GENEVA: China reported a large jump in Covid-19 hospitalisations from 15 January, the highest since the pandemic began, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
The WHO said that it awaited “detailed provincial data disaggregated by the week of reporting about 60,000 additional covid-related hospital casualties reported by China the previous week and did not include them in the tally.
WHO’s stance on Covid-19
The number of citizens hospitalised with Covid in China rose by 70% to 63,307 the last week, the WHO report said quoting information submitted by Beijing. This is the highest weekly data in China has submitted since Covid first emerged there more than three years ago.
In early December 2022, Beijing abruptly dismantled its strict three-year anti-virus regime of frequent testing, travel curbs, and lockdowns after widespread protests in late November 2022, and cases have surged since then across the country of 1.4 billion.
The WHO says that China has been the under-reporting scale of the outbreak and repeatedly called for more detailed information, including on deaths, excess mortality, and genetic sequences.
