Top Stories

Chinese authorities revise Wuhan coronavirus deaths up 50%

Top Stories | Apr 30, 2020:

FORUM Staff

Chinese authorities in the city where COVID-19 first emerged say the death toll at the pandemic’s epicenter is 50% higher than reported — a revision in data that has led to some accusing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of a cover-up.

There has been wide skepticism about the data coming out of Wuhan, China, but the CCP attributed the gross inaccuracy to deaths of people at home because there was no room for them at hospitals, mistaken reporting by medical staff and deaths at facilities that weren’t linked to the epidemic information network, The Associated Press (AP) reported in mid-April 2020. A further review has revealed that the official coronavirus death toll in Wuhan is actually 3,896 — 50% higher than the previously reported figure.

“Medical workers at some facilities might have been preoccupied with saving lives and there existed delayed reporting, underreporting or misreporting, but there has never been any cover-up, and we do not allow cover-ups,” said Zhao Lijian, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, according to The Guardian newspaper.

In January 2020, as the virus continued its early spread, Wuhan went several days without reporting new cases or deaths, which spurred speculation that the CCP was trying to downplay the morbidity of the virus, according to AP. Chinese police detained and reprimanded a group of eight medical workers, including a doctor who later died from the virus, after they tried to alert others about the virus on social media, according to widely reported media accounts.

Two days before China’s revised Wuhan death totals came to light, the former head of Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service publicly blamed the CCP for concealing crucial information about the outbreak from the rest of the world.

“There is a deep anger in America at what they see as having been inflicted on us all by China, and China is evading a good deal of responsibility for the origin of the virus, for failing to deal with it initially,” John Sawers, chief of MI6 from 2009-2014, told the BBC. He was referencing U.S. President Donald Trump’s disapproval with the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) response to the coronavirus as it relates to China and the WHO’s apparent unwillingness to deem the CCP negligent in its response to the pandemic.

“Intelligence is about acquiring information which has been concealed from you by other states and other actors,” Sawers added. “There was a brief period in December and January when the Chinese were indeed concealing this from the West.”

Australian officials most recently added to growing concern over a CCP cover-up and called for an international investigation into the origins and spread of COVID-19, according to Voice of America (VOA) News.

“The key to going forward in the context of these issues is transparency, transparency from China most certainly, transparency from all of the key countries across the world who will be part of any review that takes place,” Australia Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne said, according to VOA. “I think it is fundamental that we identify, we determine an independent review mechanism to examine the development of this epidemic, its development into a pandemic, the crisis that is occurring internationally.”

Any review that takes place should be done by an organization other than WHO, Australia insists.

With the number of new infections now steadily declining in Wuhan, the city is no longer on lockdown, and its residents have begun picking up the cremated remains of relatives. (Pictured: Workers in protective clothing process passengers from Wuhan, China, after they arrive on a high-speed train in Beijing on April 19, 2020. Wuhan, the city at the center of the global coronavirus epidemic, lifted a 76-day lockdown in early April and allowed people to leave for destinations across China.)

However, the continued uptick in loss of life elsewhere in the world still has global leaders scrutinizing the Chinese response and demanding answers.

“Let’s not be so naive as to say it [the CCP] has been much better at handling this,” French President Emmanuel Macron told the Financial Times newspaper. “There are clearly things that have happened that we don’t know.”

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button