Cases climb after China revises tracking methods
Death toll reaches 1,486; those stricken worldwide surpass 65,000
Beijing (AP) — China reported a surge in deaths and infections from a new virus Thursday after changing the way the count is tallied, further clouding an epidemic that has stirred fear as it spread to more than two dozen countries.
The spike came after two days in which the number of new cases dropped and brought little clarity for those desperate to understand the trajectory of the outbreak.
“What we need is some consistency over time to give us an idea of what’s actually happening,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University in the United States. “Is transmission happening or is it not?”
The answer has proved frustratingly elusive despite the official reports.
The Hubei health authority reported that 116 more people died of the coronavirus in Hubei province on Thursday, bringing the total number of deaths globally to at least 1,486.
The vast majority of the deaths are in mainland China, with only one death in Hong Kong, one in the Philippines and one in Japan.
Hubei authorities confirmed an additional 4,823 cases of the virus in Hubei, which brings the total number of cases in the epicenter of the outbreak to 51,986.
The global number of confirmed coronavirus cases has now exceeded 65,191.
Dr. Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergencies chief, said the dramatic increase was due to a revised way of counting cases and cautioned it did not represent a sudden surge in new infections.
“This increase you’ve all seen in the last 24 hours is largely down to how cases are being diagnosed and reported,” he said, noting that the jump in infections refers to patients that go back days and weeks, including to the beginning of the outbreak.
China’s National Health Commission said officials in Hubei province, whose stricken capital of Wuhan is the virus’ epicenter, began tallying cases using a lower bar of “clinical diagnosis.” That appears to count cases based on doctors’ analyses and lung imaging rather than relying solely on laboratory test results. More than 13,000 of the newly-reported infections were a result of the new way of counting.