China's narrow criteria for identifying deaths caused by COVID-19 will underestimate the true toll of the pandemic's current wave there and could make it harder to communicate the best ways for people to protect themselves, foreign health experts warn.
Only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after contracting COVID-19 will be classified as having been caused by the coronavirus, a leading Chinese medical expert said on Tuesday.
Deaths from complications at other sites in the body, including underlying conditions made worse by the virus, would be excluded from the official toll, said Wang Guiqiang, head of the infectious disease department at Peking University First Hospital.