Surprisingly low Shanghai COVID death count spurs questions

By HUIZHONG WU and DAKE KANG
Associated Press

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — In Shanghai, a city of 25 million people with hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 cases, Chinese health authorities have reported only 25 coronavirus deaths. An Associated Press examination of the death toll sheds light on how the figures have been obscured by the way Chinese health authorities tally virus statistics, applying a much narrower, less transparent, and at times inconsistent standard than the rest of the world. Interviews with family members of patients who have tested positive, a publicly released phone call with a government health official and an internet archive compiled by families of the dead all raise issues with how the city is counting its cases and deaths, almost certainly resulting in a dramatic undercount.