Patients receive oxygen therapy in a community healthcare institution in East China's Shanghai, January 4, 2023. Photo: Xinhua

The Chinese mainland recorded 6,364 COVID-19 deaths in hospitals from January 20 to 26, according to the latest epidemic-related figures released by Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Chinese CDC) on Saturday. Compared to the previous week (January 13-19), when 12,658 COVID-19 deaths were reported, the death toll has dropped by nearly half.

Of the 6,364 in-hospital COVID-19 deaths, 289 were due to respiratory failure caused by the virus, and 6,075 deaths were from underlying conditions interacting with the epidemic infection, according to the Chinese CDC.

China has insisted on classifying deaths of patients with a positive nucleic acid test as COVID-19-related deaths, which is in line with the WHO and international standards, Chinese health authorities said earlier.

The Chinese mainland has reported more than 80,000 deaths throughout the COVID-19 outbreak in about three years.

On Thursday, 215,958 people nationwide were still hospitalized with COVID-19 infections, including 26,156 seriously ill patients. Of these, 1,894 are experiencing serious COVID-19 infection symptoms, and 24,262 are seriously ill with underlying disease combined with COVID-19 infection.

The Chinese CDC also announced the national vaccination status as of Thursday. More than 3.48 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered, and the total number of people vaccinated is 1.31 billion. Of those, 1.27 billion have been fully vaccinated. The number of people who have completed at least one booster immunization is 827 million.

Among people aged 60 years and above, more than 678 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered, with 241 million elderly people vaccinated. About 230 million of them have been fully vaccinated, and 192 million have completed the first dose of booster vaccination.

China's latest census (2020) shows that the total population of the Chinese mainland is about 1.412 billion, and the total number of people over 60 years old is 264.02 million, accounting for 18.7 percent of the population.

According to a report from the Chinese CDC released on Wednesday, multiple COVID-19 statistics have already passed their peaks. Around December 22, 2022, the number of COVID-19 infections and visits to fever clinics across China reached their peak with new infections surpassing 7 million and visits to fever clinics reaching 2.87 million on a daily basis, and the number of deaths reached a daily peak of 4,273 on January 4.

Officials from the National Health Commission said on January 19 that the country has passed three peaks of COVID waves, as the number of fever clinic visits nationwide peaked on December 23, 2022, the national number of emergency department visits peaked on January 2, and the number of patients in severe conditions in hospitals peaked on January 5.