China revealed on Thursday that 239 COVID-19 fatalities occurred in June, a considerable increase from the month before, when most containment restrictions had been loosened.
164 deaths were reported by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in May, whereas there were none in either April or March.
Early in 2020, China began implementing a “zero-COVID” containment policy, and the country attributes a considerable number of lives saved to the stringent lockdowns, quarantines, border closures, and mandatory mass testing.
However, the restrictions were abruptly withdrawn in December with little advance notice, which caused a final surge that, according to the official toll, claimed the lives of around 60,000 people.
According to the Chinese CDC, deaths this year surged in January and February, reaching a high of 4,273 on January 4 before steadily declining to zero on February 23.
Chinese health officials remained mum regarding whether they anticipated the trend to persist or whether they would advise the restoration of preventative measures.
The CDC reported that the other deaths in June involved underlying diseases, while two of them involved respiratory failure brought on by illness. Diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and other chronic conditions can be among them.
China reported 121,490 deaths from COVID-19 and 99,292,081 confirmed cases between January 3, 2020, and July 5, 2023, to the World Health Organization.
The number of deaths in China may have exceeded the official count by many hundreds of thousands of people, according to experts, although it is still substantially lower than in the United States and Europe.
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