China has raised the official Coronavirus death toll of it’s city Wuhan by 50%, giving more credence to US President Trump’s claim that the country lied to the world about it’s death figures.
Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged late last year, admitted people died at home and cases were missed as hospitals struggled to cope in the early days of the outbreak.
In the new revised figures, the Wuhan city government increased the death toll by 1,290 – about 50 percent – bringing the total in Wuhan to 3,869 and the number of deaths across China to 4,632.
Chinese State controlled Xinhua News Agency quoted an unidentified official in Wuhan’s epidemic and prevention and control headquarters as saying mistaken reporting occurred during the outbreak.
“A surging number of patients at the early stage of the pandemic overwhelmed medical resources and the admission capacity of medical institutions,” the Wuhan Municipal Headquarters for COVID-19 Epidemic Prevention and Control, said in a statement posted to state news agency Xinhua.
“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.”
After compiling 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 to ‘remove double-counted cases and fill in missed cases,’ Chinese officials say the 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.
China has now denied editing its official death toll for political purposes.
In an editorial, the Global Times, a tabloid owned by the Communist Party, rejected the accusations and said the revisions were made “based on facts” and that China had not been affected by “Western noise.”
“The strict review and correction of the death toll means there is no room for deliberate concealment,” the paper said. “Speculation that China falsified the death toll from the coronavirus is far from the truth. China is not a country where one can fabricate data in complete disregard of the law.”
