Wuhan raises coronavirus death toll by 50%

BEIJING China’s coronavirus ground-zero city of Wuhan admitted missteps in tallying its death toll as it abruptly raised the count by 50 percent, increasing doubts about how transparent China has been during the crisis.

Wuhan’s epidemic control headquarters said in a social media posting on Friday that it had added 1,290 deaths to the tally in the city, which has suffered the vast majority of China’s fatalities from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. That brings the total number of deaths in the city to 3,869. But the city government only added 325 cases, raising the city’s total number of infections to 50,333.

The change also pushes the nationwide death toll up by nearly 39 percent to 4,632, based on official national data released earlier on Friday. The official toll in the country remains well below the number of fatalities in much smaller countries such as Italy and Spain.

The United States has led the charge in questioning China’s handling of the pandemic and how much information it has really shared with the international community since the virus emerged late last year.

Authorities in Wuhan initially tried to cover up the outbreak, punishing doctors who had raised the alarm online in December,  and there have been questions about the government’s recording of infections.

US President Donald Trump said China’s death toll was far higher that it had admitted, even after the new numbers were issued, while Washington is also probing whether the virus actually originated in a Wuhan laboratory.

Chinese scientists have said the virus emerged from a Wuhan food market whose merchandise reportedly included exotic wild animals sold for human consumption.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian acknowledged that the virus’s rapid spread had contributed to undercounting, but denied that there had been any concealment.

Wuhan cited several reasons for the missed cases, including that medical staff were overwhelmed in the early days as infections climbed, leading to late reporting, omissions or misreporting. It also cited insufficient testing and treatment facilities, and that deaths of some patients at home were not properly reported.

Hubei health authorities have previously flip-flopped on their figures. Officials abruptly added nearly 15,000 cases in mid- February, counting those who were diagnosed through lung imaging in addition to those who underwent lab tests.

The National Health Commission removed 108 deaths from the toll after discovering that some fatalities were double-counted in  Hubei. Authorities changed their methodology again in late February, no longer adding cases identified through lung imaging, and have recently started counting asymptomatic cases.