Covid scepticism deepens as China fails to release cremation data in quarterly report

China has not released the number of cremations held last winter in a quarterly report, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Thursday.  Beijing has withheld a key indicator of the pandemic death toll for a period of time when the nation faced the largest Covid wave.  

The first known case of coronavirus (COVID-19) was reported in China towards the end of 2019, and when it started to spread, it was declared a public health emergency of international concern in January 2020. 

The outbreak became a pandemic just a few weeks later, and caused havoc on mankind, killing millions of people and leaving many more reeling with long-Covid. 

But the world, to some extent, remained sceptical about the data coming from China as concerns were raised over the transparency and accuracy of information about Covid'a origin, number of deaths, and more. 

Also read: UK Covid inquiry set to open after nation suffered one of the worst death tolls in Europe 

The latest development states that last Friday (June 9), the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs released summary statistics on marriage and social welfare for the fourth quarter of 2022. The unexpected delay is raising questions over its validity. 

The absence of cremation numbers was quite unusual as the ministry has released them since 2007 on a quarterly basis. 

It appears that Covid has impacted the way China used to release such as the fourth-quarter cremation data were typically released in the first two months of the following year before 2020. 

Watch: Did US taxpayers fund $2M worth of research in Wuhan before the COVID-19 outbreak? 

A report by SCMP mentioned that Chongqing's civil affairs bureau published a notice on June 9 in which it said that the release of civil affairs data has been suspended indefinitely following an instruction from the Ministry of Civil Affairs. 

As quoted by the report, the ministry said that 2023 data would be temporarily withheld and would be "synchronised with the new provisions on data published in the newly approved 'Statistical Survey System for Civil Affairs' by the National Bureau of Statistics". 

When it comes to provincial-level data, SCMP referred to a tally which showed that several regions defied their past practices and dropped cremation numbers from public releases.

It mentioned that Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and the municipalities of Chongqing and Beijing released their fourth-quarter data largely on time, however, they skipped the cremation service numbers. Meanwhile, Hubei, Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces have not yet released any of their fourth-quarter civil affairs data. 

Also read: CoWIN leak: Indian govt refutes Covid vaccine portal data breach reports, orders probe 

Reports about Covid origin

In April, researchers in China published reports that quash unproven theories linking the spread of the virus to lab leaks. The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) researchers have published an analysis of swabs, which were collected at a wet market in Wuhan, a place in China where Covid is said to have originated.

The detailed report, which was published in Nature on April 5, has been produced after analysing the samples that were collected in the early weeks of the Covid spread in Wuhan. It was also the first peer-reviewed analysis of the Chinese swabs of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which the world had been asking China to publish.

(With inputs from agencies) 

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