It also marks a sharp accumulation of its dubious official death low overall of 10,775 since the disease was detected in Wuhan in 2019.
The United States, on the other hand, has reported more than a million deaths from COVID-19 despite a much smaller population.
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Despite reports of crowded hospitals and funeral homes, Jiao Yahui of the National Health Commission said Saturday that the peak had passed. “Knowing that the national emergency peak has passed,” he said.
China’s National Health Commission reported that another 5,503 people have died from respiratory failure in hospitals and 54,435 hospital deaths due to virus-related illnesses since Dec. 8.
The data is not for other people who would possibly have died at home, and their official death totals only include deaths from respiratory failure and pneumonia, unlike countries like the United States, which have other coronavirus-related deaths.
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Beijing had also instituted a very restrictive “zero COVID” policy that helped keep the number of cases down for some time, but did not allow other people to leave their homes and sparked protests.
Those regulations were relaxed in early December after some of the biggest public dissent protests against the ruling Communist Party in more than 30 years.
Sudden replacement and lack of preparation, in addition to insufficient vaccination levels, led to an increase in the infection rate after restrictions were lifted.
In the recent update, the Health Commission said the average age of those who died 80 and 90 percent were over 65, and 90 percent had underlying physical conditions.
“The number of elderly patients dying from the disease is large, suggesting that we deserve to pay more attention to elderly patients and do everything possible to save their lives,” Jiao said.
In early December, Beijing stopped reporting deaths following a surge in cases in October and local reports that millions of people could be inflamed across the country.
The country has been continuously criticized for allegedly downplaying deaths and the number of cases, with accusations that it downplayed the emergence of the virus in 2019 before it erupted into a global pandemic.
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Beijing recently retaliated against Japan and South Korea by denying visas to countries after they, along with the United States, set coronavirus tests for others traveling from China.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.