Trump says China hid numbers, Beijing rejects claim

WASHINGTON:US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the coronavirus numbers being reported by China were “a little bit on the light side”, echoing claims that Beijing may have been underreporting them in a bid to overstate its response and bolster its image.

China reacted sharply. A foreign ministry spokeswoman told reporters “to slander, to discredit, to blame others or to shift responsibility cannot make up the time that has been lost”.

Trump administration officials and lawmakers have long been sceptical of the number of cases Beijing has reported on the outbreak that started last December in Hubei province.

They have pointed to lack of independent corroboration of these reports and a particular US intelligence report given to the Trump administration last week that reportedly said China is covering up the scale of the outbreak.

Trump denied receiving that report, when asked at the daily White House briefing on the coronavirus outbreak. But he echoed the underlying sentiment. “Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side,” he said, adding, “And I’m being nice when I say that, relative to what we witnessed and what was reported.”

China has 82,431 confirmed coronavirus cases on Thursday, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s tracker; and 3,332 deaths.

The Chinese tally has remained in this range for a while now, showing that the outbreak has been stopped from spreading and growing, a narrative not widely subscribed outside China.

“Unfortunately, we are just not in a position to confirm any of the numbers that are coming out of China,” Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’brien said at the briefing. He went on to point to “public reporting” and “Chinese social media” reporting about the numbers being low.

Bloomberg News reported that a US intelligence report given to the Trump administration last week said the numbers were fake.