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Zhong Nanshan, a doctor in the southern province of Guangdong, told a Chinese newspaper Thursday that he could not believe the official death toll from the H1N1 virus – which stands at just 53 in the whole of China.
Zhong is the same person who made public his doubts about official reports on the epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2003. His warning alerted the public and even the international media to the seriousness of the situation.
China’s Ministry of Health quickly published a notice on its website Thursday afternoon stating that responses from society and the media concerning reports of the epidemic were welcomed. It said the ministry had sent nine teams to 12 provinces to work on preventing and controlling the disease.
It also repeated the warning that any attempts to cover up, falsify or delay information on the epidemic would be severely punished in accordance with state laws on the prevention and control of infectious diseases.
In fact, the Chinese government just switched its method of counting deaths from the H1N1 virus on Nov. 6. Before that date, patients who had other diseases or serious underlying medical conditions in addition to the H1N1 flu were not included.
Ministry of Health spokesman Deng Haihua “predicted” that the death toll for H1N1 victims could quickly increase because of the shift in the method of compiling statistics. But this increase did not mean the epidemic had worsened, he stressed.
However, Deng’s statement did reveal that the actual death toll for H1N1 in the mainland at least by Nov. 6 had been underestimated. For example, the H1N1 virus can harm the respiratory system and result in pneumonia. According to Zhong, some deaths that were treated as ordinary cases of pneumonia could have been caused by H1N1. He implied that this was done intentionally to give the appearance that the epidemic was under control.
According to the latest Ministry of Health figures, released on Nov. 15, a total of 69,160 patients have been diagnosed as H1N1 cases in the mainland; of those, 53 have died. These figures reportedly rose by 10,828 new patients and 28 deaths during the single week from Nov. 9-15.
To add to the confusion, however, the head of the Beijing Health Bureau “revealed” to local media on Monday that 400,000 people in Beijing alone had contracted H1N1, and recovered. So did the so-called latest figures published by the Health Department include only those who are still suffering from this contagious disease, and not those who have recovered from it?
If the revelation from the Beijing health official is true, then the overall figures for current and former patients suffering from H1N1 in the mainland could be much higher than those made public, and so could the actual death toll.
Meanwhile, the health authority in the southern city of Shenzhen also “revealed” on Sunday that it expected more than 1 million H1N1 patients, as a conservative estimate, in the future. Shenzhen just reported its first death from the virus a few days ago.
Before China’s National Day on Oct. 1, people had begun to question the extremely low death rate from H1N1 in this developing country with the biggest population in the world.
On Sept. 18 the World Health Organization announced that at least 296,000 people had contracted the H1N1 virus worldwide, at least 3,917 had died from it and the average rate of death was about 1.3 percent. At that time, China had reported 21,000 infections with a death rate of merely 0.0047 percent. Even now, China’s latest death rate is just under 0.081 percent.
The first Chinese death from H1N1 was reported on Oct. 6. One overseas Chinese website, which is blocked within the mainland, reported this along with the commentary that only after the national celebrations of the country’s 60th anniversary passed could people be pronounced “dead.”
This and other overseas websites have also published news and interviews with mainland citizens suggesting that the H1N1 epidemic is much more serious in some parts of China than the official figures imply. However, this cannot be confirmed as yet.
