Covid in China: WHO chief calls for more details on cases and sequences

The World Health Organization has asked China for more details on its Covid cases, including breakdowns by province and plans to share coronavirus sequences.

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the request during a phone call with Ma Xiaowei, director of China's National Health Commission, on Saturday.

"[The] WHO has requested a more detailed breakdown of data by province over time," the UN agency said in a statement.

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"[The] WHO continues to ask that further sequences be shared with open access databases ... for deeper phylogenetic analyses."

The call came just after China said it recorded almost 60,000 Covid-related deaths between December 8 and January 12 - the first time Beijing has released a death toll since its abrupt pivot away from its zero-Covid policy last month.

In the call, Tedros said the UN agency appreciated the authorities' public release of information on the overall situation, saying it allowed for a better understanding of the epidemiological situation and the impact of this wave in China.

He also noted efforts by Chinese authorities to scale up clinical care at all levels for its population.

The NHC said Beijing and the WHO had engaged in "technical communication" a few times since the end of zero-Covid, but did not give details of those exchanges.

It is the second time in a week that the WHO has asked for more data about the Covid-19 surge in China.

On Monday, Beijing authorities reported that the death toll remained at 5,272 and the number of confirmed cases was 118,147 - despite some provinces such as Zhejiang saying a million people were being infected per day in late December.

Two days later, WHO executive director for health emergencies Mike Ryan accused Beijing of heavily under-reporting the number of deaths from Covid-19.

A number of countries including the United States and Japan have also expressed concerns about China's lack of transparency in sharing information about the surge and set entry requirements for Chinese travellers.

Tedros said earlier this month that the travel restrictions were understandable "with circulation in China so high and comprehensive data not forthcoming".

But Wang Huiyao, president of the Centre for China and Globalisation, a Beijing-based think tank, said China was being transparent and its data indicated the outbreak was "under control".

He said the numbers would also help guide other countries to lift the restrictions on Chinese travellers.

"The [death] number in the past month or so is not small. However, it shows that in general, the situation in China is still controllable, and infections in the big cities have peaked," Wang said.

"I believe that China's move will win international recognition and respect."

Other health experts said there were still questions about whether the death toll released by Beijing reflected the situation on the ground.

Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, was quoted by a Reuters report as saying doctors were discouraged from reporting Covid-related deaths and the numbers reported included only deaths in hospitals.

A report on the Chinese science website Zhishi Fenzi, or The Intellectual, also said some rural regions were under-reporting cases and it was unclear to what extent Covid-19 was the cause of death in these areas.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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