Death toll in China nears 1,400

Counting method change has increased COVID-19 case total

BEIJING — China on Friday reported another sharp rise in the number of people infected with a new virus, as the death toll neared 1,400.

The National Health Commission said 121 more people had died from the disease known as COVID-19, and there were 5,090 new confirmed cases.

The number of reported cases has been rising more quickly after the hardest-hit province changed its method of counting them Thursday. There are now 63,851 confirmed cases in mainland China, of which 1,380havedied.

Hubei province is now including cases based on a physician’s diagnosis and before they have been confirmed by lab tests. Of the 5,090 new cases, 3,095 fell into that category.

The acceleration in the number of cases does not necessarily represent a sudden surge in new infections of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 as much as a revised methodology.

The health commission has said that the change was aimed at identifying suspected cases in which the patient has pneumonia so they can be treated more quickly and reduce the likelihood of more serious illness or death.

Experts also saw it as a reflection of a chaotic crush of people seeking treatment and the struggle to keep up with a backlog of untested samples in Hubei province and its capitalcity,wuhan,wherethedisease first surfaced in December.

“Clearly in Wuhan, the health system is under extreme pressure and so the first priority has to be the patient,” said Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh.

Elsewhere, Japan confirmed another case, a Japanese man in his 70s, a day after it reported its first death from the virus.

Morethan560caseshavebeen confirmed outside mainland China, along three deaths, one each in the Philippines and Hong Kong and a Japanese woman in her 80s.

In an unprecedented attempt to contain the disease, the Chinese government has placed the hardest-hit cities — home to more than 60 million — under lockdown. People are restricted from entering or leaving the cities, and in many places they can only leave their homes or residential complexes for shopping and other daily needs.