China has not revealed the extent to which the coronavirus outbreak has affected the country according to US intelligence. The country has allegedly under-reported the total number of cases and deaths in connection with the virus. Bloomberg News reported that three US officials said information on the subject was released to the White House in a classified report.
The officials did not want to be identified due to the secrecy of the report and did not provide further details on its contents. They did note however, that China intentionally provided incomplete reporting on the number of cases and the overall death toll. According to two of the officials, information in the report says China’s numbers are fake.
One official added that the White House received the report last week.
The outbreak started in Hubei, China in 2019 and data from Johns Hopkins University shows that China has reported around 82,000 cases of the disease and 3,300 deaths. The U.S. has reported 189,000 cases and over 4,000 deaths—the world's largest publicly reported outbreak.
Skepticism of China’s numbers has grown both inside and outside of the country as several methodologies have been used to count cases. The country did not include asymptomatic people in its counts until only recently. Over 1,500 people without symptoms were added to China’s total on Tuesday.
In Hubei province, people began to doubt the reporting when thousands of urns were stacked outside funeral homes.
In a news conference on Tuesday, State Department immunologist Deborah Birx who is advising on the subject at the White house said, “The medical community made—interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected.”
“Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.”
Iran, Indonesia, Russia and particularly North Korea are suspected of similar faulty reporting by Western officials. North Korea has not even reported one case of the disease. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have also been suspected of underreporting.
Michael Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, has accused China of not revealing the extent of the problem many times.
“This data set matters,” Pompeo said during a news conference on Tuesday. Development of Public health measures and medical therapies used for combating coronavirus “so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired,” he added.
“I would urge every nation: Do your best to collect the data. Do your best to share that information.”
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