Earlier this month, it appeared that China was quietly dropping its stringent zero COVID procedures after a high-rise fire in Xinjiang prompted protests across the country. Officially the government didn’t acknowledge the protests at all but the timing of the policy change wasn’t a coincidence.

Within days of that shift in policy Reuters was reporting that China appeared ill-prepared for a surge in infections. Even though Omicron is not life threatening to most people, the fact that China has substandard vaccines and that almost no one has built up any natural immunity means the entire country could face a surge of infections and deaths. Last Friday a US based group predicted the number of deaths in China could reach one million.

China’s abrupt lifting of stringent COVID-19 restrictions could result in an explosion of cases and over a million deaths through 2023, according to new projections from the U.S.-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

According to the group’s projections, cases in China would peak around April 1, when deaths would reach 322,000. About a third of China’s population will have been infected by then, IHME Director Christopher Murray said.

Officially, China has only had just over 5,000 deaths during the entire pandemic but those numbers are questionable to say the least. In fact, there’s good reason to think the number of COVID deaths right now is growing but that China is not recording or reporting those deaths. Last week the Financial Times reported that business was brisk at Chinese crematoriums:

Staff at one crematorium in Beijing said they cremated the bodies of at least 30 Covid victims on Wednesday and Financial Times reporters saw two body bags at a special hospital designated for coronavirus patients.

“We cremated 150 bodies [on Wednesday], many times more than a typical day last winter,” said an employee at the state-owned Beijing Dongjiao Funeral Home who asked not to be named. “Thirty or 40 had Covid.”

“We are doing it as quickly as possible [and] prioritising Covid deaths,” the employee added. “We’re cremating them the same day they are brought in.”…

Tongzhou Funeral Home employees, who asked not to be identified, told the FT the facility was facing unusually large demand and had “Covid deaths every day”, though it was not clear how many of the overall deaths were Covid-related.

Saturday, Reuters had a follow-up report confirming the same thing.

Hearses bearing the dead lined the driveway to a designated COVID-19 crematorium in the Chinese capital on Saturday while workers at the city’s dozen funeral homes were busier than normal, days after China reversed tight pandemic restrictions.

In recent days in Beijing the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has hit services from catering to parcel deliveries. Funeral homes and crematoriums across the city of 22 million are also struggling to keep up with demand as more workers and drivers testing positive for coronavirus call in sick…

The parking security operator and the owner of an urn shop at the funeral home building, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the number of deaths was above average in this period and was more when compared to the period before lifting of most pandemic curbs on Dec. 7.

China hadn’t reported any COVID deaths since December 4 despite reports like those above and some in Chinese newspapers about people dying. Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that China has acknowledged two more deaths.

China acknowledged the first Covid-19 deaths since the country ended its strict pandemic control policies, but the true scale of the outbreak is veiled by lack of data and unclear rules.

The two deaths were recorded in Beijing on Monday, China’s National Health Commission said, the first blamed on the virus in the capital since November. Official infection figures have slumped since last month after the government dropped strict testing requirements and abandoned efforts to tally asymptomatic cases. That contrasts with predictions by health experts of a surge in infections as well as reports from residents of Beijing and other cities that they have seen a sharp increase in Covid cases in their apartment buildings and personal circles.

Obviously that’s well below what is really happening in Beijing alone, much less the rest of the country. Zero COVID may have ended but the communist party’s endless campaign to use state media to control its own image has not.

So what are the real numbers? By design we may never know. Hospitals, funeral parlors and crematoriums answer to the communist party, like everyone else. If someone is keeping track of the real death toll we may never see those figures. Here’s a Reuters video report on the situation in Beijing.