After China abandoned its zero COVID policy in December 2022, a significant surge in excess deaths occurred, totaling an estimated 1.87 million within two months. The figures starkly surpassed China's official estimate of 60,000 COVID-19 deaths, pointing to the potential impact of limited immunity in the population.
By Vijay Kumar MalesuAug 29 2023Reviewed by Benedette Cuffari, M.Sc. In a recent study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers assess the impact of discontinuing the zero coronavirus disease 2019 policy on all-cause mortality in China.
Between early December 2022 to January 12, 2023, 60,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported in Chinese health facilities. Earlier predictions had foreseen a massive increase in excess deaths within the range of 0.97 to 2.10 million during the Omicron surge if the policy was dropped; however, these projections were not made using empirical data.
Syndromic surveillance data was also obtained using the Baidu Index , which reflects search frequencies on China's major internet search engine, Baidu. The BI, particularly during infectious disease outbreaks, serves as a trusted data source for infodemiology and infoveillance studies. The entire time series was segmented into three distinct periods, including pre-COVID-19, the period with stringent mitigation measures, and the post-zero COVID-19 policy phase. These segments were factored into a segmented negative binomial regression model, which identified monthly death counts.
Sensitivity analyses were implemented, in which one of the three universities was iteratively excluded and involved drawing 10,000 samples randomly from each parameter distribution. Death counts peaked in both cities during the fourth week of December in 2022, which corresponds to the BI peak in most provinces that month. The death toll in Beijing's universities rose dramatically by 403% in December and 56% in January when juxtaposed with anticipated numbers. Similarly, the death counts in HIT for December and January significantly surpassed expectations.
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