Wuhan officials attributed the new figure to updated reporting and
deaths outside hospitals. China has insisted there was no cover-up.To
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It has been accused of downplaying the severity of its virus outbreak.
Wuhan's 11 million residents spent months in strict lockdown conditions, which have only recently been eased.
The latest official figures bring the death toll in the city in
China's central Hubei province to 3,869, increasing the national total
to more than 4,600.
China has confirmed nearly 84,000 coronavirus infections, the
seventh-highest globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.In a
statement released on Friday, officials in Wuhan said the revised
figures were the result of new data received from multiple sources,
including records kept by funeral homes and prisons.
Deaths linked to the virus outside hospitals, such as people who
died at home, had not previously been recorded.The "statistical
verification" followed efforts by authorities to "ensure that
information on the city's Covid-19 epidemic is open, transparent and the
data [is] accurate", the statement said.
It added that health systems were initially overwhelmed and cases
were "mistakenly reported" - in some instances counted more than once
and in others missed entirely.
A shortage of testing capacity in the early stages meant that many infected patients were not accounted for, it said.
A spokesman for China's National Health Commission, Mi Feng, said
the new death count came from a "comprehensive review" of epidemic data.
In its daily news conference, the foreign ministry said accusations
of a cover-up, which have been made most stridently on the world stage
by US President Donald Trump, were unsubstantiated. "We'll never allow
any concealment," a spokesman said.Friday's revised figures come amid
growing international concern that deaths in China have been
under-reported. Questions have also been raised about Beijing's handling
of the epidemic, particularly in its early stages.
In December 2019, Chinese authorities launched an investigation into
a mysterious viral pneumonia after cases began circulating in
Wuhan.China reported the cases to the World Health Organization (WHO),
the UN's global health agency, on 31 December.
But WHO experts were only allowed to visit China and investigate the
outbreak on 10 February, by which time the country had more than 40,000
cases.
The mayor of Wuhan has previously admitted there was a lack of
action between the start of January - when about 100 cases had been
confirmed - and 23 January, when city-wide restrictions were enacted.
Around that time, a doctor who tried to warn his colleagues about an
outbreak of a Sars-like virus was silenced by the authorities. Dr Li
Wenliang later died from Covid-19.Wuhan's death toll increase of almost
exactly 50% has left some analysts wondering if this is all a bit too
neat.
For months questions have been asked about the veracity of China's official coronavirus statistics.
The inference has been that some Chinese officials may have
deliberately under-reported deaths and infections to give the impression
that cities and towns were successfully managing the emergency.
If that was the case, Chinese officials were not to know just how
bad this crisis would get in other countries, making its own figures now
seem implausibly small.
The authorities in Wuhan, where the first cluster of this disease
was reported, said there had been no deliberate misrepresentation of
data, rather that a stabilisation in the emergency had allowed them time
to revisit the reported cases and to add any previously missed.
That the new death toll was released at the same time as a press
conference announcing a total collapse in China's economic growth
figures has led some to wonder whether this was a deliberate attempt to
bury one or other of these stories.
The Wall