China adds 1,300 deaths to Wuhan toll, citing early lapses
nBEIJING: China on Friday revised upwards by nearly 1,300 the Covid-19 fatalities in the first pandemic epicentre, the city of Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in late last year, admitting that the infection hit China harder than it initially projected.
The addition, reported by state news agency Xinhua on Friday, brings the nationwide death toll up by nearly 40% to 4,636, the majority coming from the central Chinese province of Hubei, where Wuhan is located.
“The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Wuhan as of the end of April 16 was revised up by 325 to 50,333, and the number of fatalities up by 1,290 to 3,869,” Xinhua said in a report.
The revision of Covid-19 numbers comes amid global doubts about the numbers that China’s national Health Commission (NHC) has been releasing daily since the end of January.
“Do you really believe those numbers in this vast country called China, and that they have a certain number of cases and a certain number of deaths; does anybody really believe that?” US president Donald Trump had said on Wednesday.
And after China released the revised numbers, Trump tweeted on Friday: “China has just announced a doubling in the number of their deaths from the Invisible Enemy. It is far higher than that and far higher than the US, not even close!”
In a notification released on Friday, the Wuhan municipal headquarters for the Covid-19 epidemic prevention and control said the revisions were made in accordance with related laws and regulations as well as the principle of being responsible for history, the people and the deceased.
The notification listed four reasons for the discrepancy.
It said that a surging number of patients at the early stage of the epidemic “…overwhelmed medical resources and the admission capacity of medical institutions. Some patients died at home without having been treated in hospitals.” It added that overworked doctors were “preoccupied” with saving lives and treating patients, which resulted in late reporting of Covid-19 toll.
The notice said that due to a rapid increase of designated hospitals for treating Covid-19 patients, a few medical institutions were not linked to the epidemic information network “and failed to report their data in time”.
The registered information of some of the deceased patients was incomplete, and there were repetitions and mistakes in the reporting, the health authorities added.
“What lie behind epidemic data are the lives and health of the general public, as well as the credibility of the government,” an official in Wuhan told state media.