The Chinese city of Wuhan, the original epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, has revised the number of virus-related fatalities up by 1,290 to 3,869, local authorities said Friday.
The government of Hubei province, home to Wuhan, said in a statement that the number of casualties has been revised up due to late reports from medical institutions and due to the fact that some coronavirus patients died at home while hospitals were overloaded in the early stages of the epidemic.
“The registration of some death cases was incomplete, and there were repetition and mistakes in the reporting,” according to the statement.
The revision comes as the accuracy of China’s coronavirus data has been questioned abroad and by its own citizens.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called on China to show “full transparency” and to share information in the fight against the Covid-19 epidemic.
US President Donald Trump had said previously that “you don’t know what the [coronavirus] numbers are in China.”
The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Wuhan was revised up by 325 to 50,333, the government said.
Hubei authorities had twice before changed coronavirus tallies. In mid-February, they switched diagnostic criteria to allow for the clinical diagnosis of new cases, as opposed to diagnoses based exclusively on nucleic acid tests, a move which at the time led to a tenfold increase in new coronavirus cases over the previous day. Authorities reverted the decision a week later.
China also caused an uproar by initially not including asymptomatic cases in its daily tallies – even if the cases were confirmed by nucleic acid tests.
The National Health Commission started reporting asymptomatic cases on April 1.
Over the past few weeks, there has been intense speculation that the number of coronavirus casualties in Wuhan had much exceeded official reports, based on the number of urns released to family members in late March.
Media reports abounded of people who died at home without receiving medical care.
The state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Wuhan’s municipal government as saying that the latest revisions were made “in accordance with related laws and regulations as well as the principle of being responsible for history, people and the deceased.”
The government said it pooled data from “all epidemic-related locations” including clinics, hospitals, makeshift hospitals, quarantine sites, communities with Covid-19 cases, prisons, detention centers, funeral homes and elderly care centers. (dpa)
