China's official swine flu death toll has soared to 325, with more than a third of those fatalities reported in the first week of December, the health ministry has announced.
The total number of A(H1N1) influenza cases in the country surpassed 100,000 as of December 6, the ministry said in a statement posted Wednesday on its website.
Of the total deaths, 125 of them were reported in the week from November 30 to December 6, signalling that the death rate was picking up pace.
A ministry official was quoted earlier this month by the Beijing News as saying cold weather was to blame for the rapid rise in the number of swine flu fatalities.
As of Wednesday, China had vaccinated more than 31 million people against the virus. Beijing aims to vaccinate up to 65 million people by the end of the year.
Last month, the health ministry ordered more transparent reporting of swine flu fatalities following comments by a renowned medical whistleblower who questioned official tallies.
Medical expert Zhong Nanshan was quoted by a Chinese newspaper as saying he suspected authorities in some areas were under-reporting fatalities to convince superiors they were containing the virus.
Zhong's opinion carries weight after he earned wide respect in 2003 for defying the official line on the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak to help reveal the true extent of the epidemic.
The government had initially tried to hide the SARS outbreak and only owned up after it began to spill over into other countries.
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