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The CNN proprietary document figures for internal use are much higher than the official figures for new infections and deaths.
December 1 marks the first anniversary of the first official Covid-19 diagnosis in Hubei Province, China. Since then, the epidemic has spread around the world, our country of origin is currently in the second wave, and although vaccination may begin in several countries in December, it will be a few more months before we can live normally again.
We still don’t have an exact picture of exactly how the epidemic started, but a report now released by CNN points to several major shortcomings. According to the TV channel’s report, the 117-page report was prepared for the Hubei Provincial Epidemiological Center for internal use and was leaked by an avid activist shrouded in anonymity.
CNN asked six independent experts to find out if they were real documents. They all found the document to be genuine: one of them said they had seen parts of the report previously in an undercover investigation, while another IT expert said they had found no signs of forgery.
The article notes that, although the Chinese government was suspected of deliberately concealing the severity of the epidemic and therefore Western countries were unable to take appropriate action, there is no evidence in the document that this was the case. You may refer to.
An audit in October 2019 also revealed that the local epidemiological care system faces serious problems: few people, little money and, therefore, it cannot properly carry out its public health tasks. The natural consequence of this was that when the epidemic broke out, they were unable to react quickly and issue a warning.
In the early stages of the epidemic, the epidemiological authority did not play a leading role in the investigation of the coronavirus, checking the current situation and making recommendations for the introduction of various epidemiological measures – read the document. At the same time, it is not certain that if the Hupei epidemic had been heard in time, events would have been different: The report says the institute does not play a prominent role and does not really listen to what it says in general.
The difference between the numbers can also be explained by bad IT records. the computerized system for receiving public health reports is very slow and often does not work, so changes in the epidemiological situation can also be registered late.
If this is really the reason why there are figures in the report other than what we know could be the subject of further investigation, then in any case, it is worth looking at how big the differences are.
These were divided into four categories: confirmed (2345 individuals), diagnosed by clinical means (1772), suspected (1796), tested positive (5).
As of mid-February, clinically diagnosed cases were also classified as confirmed. It was then that several health and political leaders of the province were dismissed. On February 17, 93 deaths were officially recorded, but according to inside information, the true figure was 196.
On March 7, the official death toll in Huupei province, which is also home to Wuhan, was 2,986, but the leaked document writes nearly 500 cases, 3,456. The situation was similar with the new cases registered for that day: the official number was 83 and the non-public number 115.
At that point, up to 23.3 days could have elapsed between the onset of symptoms and the confirmed diagnosis, which is a very long time to keep an epidemic under control. It was also a problem that the tests initially developed for SARS were used to diagnose the virus, but in many cases they gave false negative results. Over time, clinical tools like CT have also been implemented to identify Covid-19 and appropriate tests have been developed.
There was another incident covered by the report, but it is not yet known how much it contributed to the coronavirus pandemic. In December 2019, twenty times more influenza patients were registered at Hupei than in previous years. This does not immediately mean that among these diseases there were coronaviruses that were not noticed, but the health care system may have been so burdened by such an epidemic that professionals could pay less attention to newer and more dangerous viruses. Furthermore, flu patients may have even helped spread Covid-19 by causing more people to go to the hospital than usual.
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