A new US study suggests that China’s sudden move to end its strict COVID-19 regime, which spread the virus to its 1.4 billion residents, could lead to nearly 2 million additional deaths over the next two months.

The study, conducted by the federally funded Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, was drawn from a sample of mortality data published by some universities in China and Internet searches.

It found that between December 2022 and January 2023, an estimated 1.87 million additional deaths from all causes occurred in people over the age of 30, and were observed in all provinces of mainland China except Tibet.

China’s decision last December to end a three-year zero-Covid policy, which included massive testing and stringent and persistent quarantine lockdowns, led to a sharp increase in hospitalizations and deaths, health experts say That was not extensively reported by the government.

The study, published Thursday in JAMA Network Open, says the number of additional deaths in January is far higher than the official Chinese government estimates, as hospital deaths from COVID-19 have increased since the zero-COVID policy was abandoned a month ago. 60,000 of the victims had died.

Read more: Covid, inflation push 68 million more into poverty

In the study, researchers conducted statistical analysis using information from published obituaries and data obtained from searches on Baidu, a popular Chinese Internet search engine.

“Our study sets an empirically derived benchmark estimate of excess deaths associated with the removal of the zero-Covid policy in China,” the researchers write. These findings are important for understanding how the sudden spread of COVID-19 in a population can lead to population deaths. How can it affect the rate. ,

China’s National Health Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Global health experts have repeatedly called on China to reveal more data as reports of rising hospitalizations and deaths began to emerge, and especially as the threat of the new variant became a concern.

China to stop reporting official daily death tolls at the end of 2022. The World Health Organization states that China has accounted for 121,628 Covid deaths out of a total global death toll of nearly 7 million.

In a rare move, a Chinese province briefly published data on its website in July showing a 70% increase in cremations in the first quarter of this year that it later retracted.

In February, China’s top leaders declared a “decisive victory” over Covid.

But the virus is still spreading in the country and on Thursday, Beijing health officials said that Covid is still the number one infectious disease in the capital, according to Chinese state media.

Officials cited a new Omicron variant, called EG.5 or “Eris”, named after the Greek goddess of strife and discord, as the current dominant strain throughout China.

The Global Times reported, “The National Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention said the proportion of the new variant EG.5 increased from 0.6% in April to 71.6% in August, becoming the dominant strain in most provinces of China.”