CNN
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It was drawn on a series of satellite images Chinese cities crowds at crematoria and funeral homes have taken hold as the country continues to battle an unprecedented wave of Covid-19 infections after strict pandemic restrictions were lifted.
Pictures taken by Makhar in late December and early January and reviewed by CNN show a funeral home that appears to be building a brand new parking lot on the outskirts of Beijing, as well as lines of vehicles waiting outside funeral homes. Kunming, Nanjing, Chengdu, Tangshan and Huzhou.
China recently moved away from a strict zero-Covid approach to the virus that sparked mass unrest after more than two years of tight controls on citizens’ privacy.
China’s strict policies have protected its population from the mass deaths seen in Western countries – a fact brought home time and time again to illustrate the supposed superiority of the Communist Party’s restrictions.
The satellite images are consistent with CNN’s social media reports and eyewitness accounts of crowds at funeral homes and crematoriums.
CNN reported firsthand the makeshift facilities used to hold the dead in Beijing, as overworked workers struggled to keep up with the volume of boxes containing yellow body bags and families reported waiting days to bury or cremate their loved ones.
Meanwhile, China’s official Covid-19 death toll remains surprisingly low after easing restrictions – with just 37 deaths recorded since December 7.
The country lists only Covid patients suffered respiratory failure He died of Covid, a criterion which the World Health Organization (WHO) criticized as “too narrow”.
As reports of overcrowded hospitals and funeral homes spread, China faced accusations from the WHO and the United States. expresses low severity on the current outbreak, with global health officials urging Beijing to share more information about the explosive spread.
“We continue to demand faster, more regular, reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths from China, as well as more comprehensive, real-time virus sequencing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing in Geneva last week.
“WHO is concerned about the risk to life in China and has reiterated the importance of vaccination, including booster doses, to prevent hospitalization, severe illness and death,” he said.
Speaking further, WHO’s executive director for emergencies, Mike Ryan, said the figures released by China “underrepresent the true impact of the disease” in terms of hospital and intensive care unit admissions, as well as deaths.
I acknowledged that many countries have seen delays in reporting hospital data, but pointed to China’s definition of Covid deaths as part of the issue.
