China has revised the death toll data in Wuhan, city where the coronavirus outbreak began, by 50 percent and admitting people died at home and cases were missed or not reported.
This adjustment, detailed in a social media post by the city government on Friday, increased the death toll by 1,290 – about 50 percent – bringing the total to 3,869. The revision brought the number of dead across China to 4,632 as at press time.
This follows suggestion by state media that the previous undercount was due to insufficient admission capabilities at overwhelmed medical facilities, blaming a few medical institutions and overloaded hospitals, Metro UK reports.
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The number of total cases in the city – which has a population of 11 million – was also raised to over 50,300, accounting for about two thirds of China’s total 82,692 announced cases.
Chinese media, Xinhua News Agency quoted an unidentified official in Wuhan’s epidemic and prevention and control headquarters who said that mistaken reporting occurred during the outbreak.
The official explained that;
Due to the insufficiency in admission and treatment capability, a few medical institutions failed to connect with the disease prevention and control system in time, while hospitals were overloaded and medics were overwhelmed with patients.
The authorities said there had been late reports from medical institutions, while some patients had died at home as hospitals struggled to cope in the early stages of the outbreak.
Xinhua News Agency reported that;
Some patients died at home without having been treated in hospitals. During the height of their treating efforts, hospitals were operating beyond their capacities, and medical staff were preoccupied with saving and treating patients, resulting in belated, missed and mistaken reporting.
This comes as major skepticism trails China’s reported cases, with questions repeatedly being raised from various organizations and world leaders in different nations about the reliability of the country’s data.
Among those accusing China of hiding the ‘truth’ about the origin of the virus and false Coronavirus data is US President Donald Trump.
The President on Tuesday cut funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO), after accusing the organisation of helping China to ‘cover up’ the spread of the virus.
Wuhan in particular has faced heavy scrutiny, after it went several days in January without reporting new cases or deaths.
This occurrence led to accusations that Chinese officials were seeking to hide the real Coronavirus figures in order to downplay the seriousness of the outbreak and waste opportunities to quickly bring it under control.
The official further revealed that the new figures were compiled through a comparison of data from Wuhan’s epidemic prevention and control big data system, the city’s funeral service system, the municipal hospital authority’s information system, and the nucleic acid test system in order to ‘remove double-counted cases and fill in missed cases’.
The source explained that new death cases were added because non-hospitalized deaths had not been registered at the disease control information system and some confirmed cases had been reported late or not been reported at all by some medical institutions.
Wuhan city, in the central Hubei province, is believed to have seen its first cases in December 2019, with the city’s seafood market widely suggested to be the source of the outbreak, though some claim it may have originated in a nearby laboratory.
The city lifted its travel ban on April 8, after a 76-day lockdown.
