The official coronavirus death toll in China has risen sharply after a major revision was announced in the number of Wuhan fatalities. The count jumped by close to 1,300 on Friday, according to AP News.
The new figures came as a result of an in depth review of the deaths that took place during the initial chaotic response. The official toll in Wuhan is now up 50 percent to 3,869 deaths. While China’s national totals still have not been revised, Wuhan’s new numbers bring the country’s death toll from 3,342 to 4,632.
The higher numbers are not a surprise for many—though coming up with an accurate toll while in the midst of a crisis is virtually impossible.
Wuhan’s coronavirus response headquarters said the undercount came as a result of several factors, reported the official Xinhua News Agency.
It mentioned things like deaths that occurred at peoples homes, improper reporting by medical staff and some deaths the were not connected to the epidemic information network.
“As a result, belated, missed and mistaken reporting occurred,” said an unidentified official from the response headquarters.
The official went on to say that some medical institutions were late to report cases or didn’t report them at all.
The numbers were reviewed in late March and took data from many sources into consideration. Data was collected from the city’s hospital, funeral service systems, fever clinics, quarantine sites, temporary hospitals, elderly care centres and prisons.
The review added 1,454 new deaths along with 164 deaths that had been counted twice or wrongly identified as coronavirus cases. The number of confirmed cases in Wuhan also rose to 50,333.
This comes after suspicions of purposeful underreporting by Chinese officials who wanted to downplay the impact of the outbreak. Eight medical workers even received threats from police after attempting to warn people of the virus over social media. One of them included a doctor who died as a result of the virus.
Chinese officials still deny any accusations of covering up cases, noting that they gave timely and accurate reports.
“The data released by Wuhan reflects openness and transparency and an attitude of seeking truth from facts,” Zhao Lijian, a foreign ministry spokesman said Friday.
The World Health Organization has received heavy criticism for defending China and the way the country handled the outbreak. President Donald Trump has even gone as far as to suspend funding for the organization.
Experts believe that there were approximately 3,000 coronavirus cases in China before the government informed the public of the situation. The country also downplayed the disease’s risk of human-to-human transmission, even when infected people were checking into hospitals across the country.
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