DOUBTS ABOUT TOLL IN CHINA
Coverup eyed as tallies worsen in U.S., Europe
BEIJING — Every few days brings another grim milestone in the coronavirus outbreak. First Italy and Spain surpassed China in reported deaths. Then, this week, the U.S. and France did.
But did they really? Skepticism about China’s numbers has swirled throughout the crisis, fueled by official efforts to quash bad news in the early days and a general distrust of the government. Long lines of people waiting to collect the ashes of loved ones at funeral homes last week revived the debate.
There is no smoking gun pointing to a coverup by China’s ruling Communist Party. But intentional or not, there is reason to believe that more people died of COVID-19 than the official tally, which stood at 3,312 at the end of Wednesday. The same applies to the 81,554 confirmed cases, now exceeded by the U.S., Italy and Spain.
President Trump, when asked at a White House press briefing whether China’s numbers are accurate said, “I’m not an accountant from China.” Still, Trump said that Beijing’s tally appeared “to be a little bit on the light side, and I’m being nice when I say that, relative to what we witnessed and what was reported.”
The health system in Wuhan, the city where threefourths of China’s victims died, was overwhelmed at the peak of the outbreak. Hospitals overflowed, patients with symptoms were sent home and there weren’t enough kits to test everyone. In any country, getting a complete picture in the fog of war is virtually impossible.
“The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 by country appears like a grim league table and draws the attention of many,” said Hsu Li Yang, who heads the infectious diseases program at the National University of Singapore. “However, it is important to understand that these numbers — be it from China, Italy, Singapore or the U.S.A. — are all inaccurate, and they are all underestimates to varying degrees of the actual number of infections.”
China scrambled hard in late January to handle the spiraling number of infected people and test them. On some days, it reported more new suspected cases — those who had symptoms but had not yet been tested — than confirmed ones.
Those who died before they were tested never made it into the official death tally. Just how many is unclear. An unidentified doctor told Caixin, a Chinese magazine, that the death toll for suspected cases at the doctor’s hospital was almost as high as for confirmed ones over a 20-day period.
Others died at home before they were tested, since hospitals didn’t have enough beds to admit them.
At the time, some people in China asked on social media whether the reported death toll was inaccurate for those reasons. The posts have been deleted, probably victims of censorship.
A few posts raised the question again last week after online images showed people in Wuhan lining up for hours to collect the ashes of relatives and anecdotal media reports that thousands of urns were being delivered to funeral homes. As of the end of Tuesday, the city’s coronavirus death toll was 2,553.
The city, which is gradually easing virus-control restrictions that have kept residents from moving around for two months, began allowing ashes to be collected in time for an upcoming holiday when people tend to relatives’ graves.