During a White House press briefing on Jan. 25, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said that China hasn’t been “fully transparent” about COVID numbers. “And we cannot speak to the veracity of those numbers. We urge China to be fully transparent about what’s going on.”
Under increasing international pressure to share COVID data, the Chinese regime reported nearly 60,000 COVID-related deaths in hospitals between Dec. 8 and Jan. 12, a massive jump over previous reports. However, the new number casts doubts about the actual COVID death toll in China, as it excludes deaths that occur at home, and some doctors have said authorities don’t want them to put COVID as the cause of death on death certificates if there was a concurrent disease present.