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CNN received and inspected 117 pages of leaked documents from the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention. This is the largest leak since the start of the pandemic, and it shows what and when local officials knew.
The Chinese government denies accusations by the United States and other Western nations that it deliberately withheld information related to the virus. Beijing says it has been open since the start of the pandemic.
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Documents obtained by CNN show that COVID-19 patients in Hubei province were diagnosed with the disease very slowly. Even if Hubei officials presented the original figures to the public in a transparent manner, the documents show that health workers relied on a flawed disease testing and reporting system.
Documents from early March show that the average time from onset of symptoms to confirmation of diagnosis was 23.3 days, which, according to experts interviewed by CNN, had a strong impact on surveillance and control of the disease. .
China defends itself by releasing all information in a timely manner, but the country’s Foreign Ministry, the National Health Commission, and the Hubei Health Commission, which runs the local Center for Disease Control and Prevention, have not responded. to CNN questions.
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Health experts say the documents reveal why what China knew in the early months of the pandemic matters.
“Obviously, they made mistakes, not just the mistakes you make when dealing with a new virus. It is also a politically motivated and bureaucratic mistake,” said Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The CNN documents were leaked by a person who did not want to reveal his identity. He said he worked in China’s health care system and was a patriot who wanted to expose the censored truth. It is unclear how these documents were obtained and why they were chosen.
The documents were approved by six independent experts. One of them, who has close ties to China, told the broadcaster that he had seen some confidential documents earlier this year. The European security officer, after examining China’s internal documents and procedures, also confirmed to CNN that these documents were true.
More optimistic data for the world
CNN received documents with data for two days, on February 10 and March 7. These figures often contradict what officials said publicly at the time. Analysts say such a discrepancy is likely a combination of a malfunctioning disease information system and a recurring instinct to hide bad news.
The documents reveal what the officials knew but chose not to inform the public.
On February 10, China reported 2,478 cases of infection in the country, but documents show that 5,918 cases were reported in Hubei. This number was divided into categories that reveal what the disease diagnosis methodology was like at that time.
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The documents indicate that there were 2,345 “confirmed cases”, 1,772 “clinically diagnosed cases” and 1,796 “suspected cases”.
According to analysts, the strict and limited criteria led to erroneous figures. “Many of the suspected cases had to be included in the confirmed cases,” Huang told CNN.
“Conservative figures have been released and this reflects how confusing, complicated and chaotic the situation was at the time,” he said.
That month, Hubei officials published the daily number of “confirmed cases” and then included “suspected cases” in their reports, without specifying the number of seriously ill patients who were considered “clinically diagnosed cases” after receiving the diagnosis of a doctor.
In providing national statistics, officials reported a daily number of “confirmed cases” as well as a variable number of “suspected cases” throughout the pandemic, which appeared to include “clinically diagnosed cases.” This gratuitous use of “suspected cases” did not adequately reflect seriously ill patients who were deemed by doctors to be infected with COVID-19, reports CNN.
William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University, says that if American epidemiologists had helped China, the data would have been presented differently.
According to Schaffner, Chinese officials sought to downplay the epidemic. If patients suspected of having coronavirus had been included in the statistics as sick, this would have broadened the scope of the outbreak and allowed a better understanding of the mode of infection and the actual figures.
Coronavirus diagnostic protocols released by China’s National Health Commission in late January show that doctors considered the patient a “suspected case” if he had contact with the patient, fever and symptoms of pneumonia.
For a case to be “clinically diagnosed,” symptoms had to be confirmed by X-ray or CT scan. The confirmed cases were those that tested positive for the polymerase chain reaction (PRG).
Did you want to hide your lack of preparation?
Andrew Mertha, director of a Chinese studies program at Johns Hopkins University, says Chinese officials may have tried to downplay the numbers to cover up a lack of funding and unpreparedness from local health authorities.
According to Mertha, the documents were drafted in such a way that senior officials could shed light on the situation however they wanted.
“Give them all the options without putting anything in an overtly embarrassing position: let them choose between an anvil and a lifeboat,” Mertha told CNN.
Chinese officials have improved the information system, with “clinically diagnosed cases” already classified as “confirmed cases” in mid-February. The top Hubei provincial and health officials in charge of the outreach have lost their posts.
The expanded and improved testing system meant that “suspected cases” could be identified more quickly, with fewer numbers in the statistics. At the same time, health officials criticized China’s diagnostic system for not counting asymptomatic cases.
The death statistics in the documents also reveal discrepancies. On March 7, it was announced that 2,986 people had died in Hubei since the outbreak began. However, internal documents indicate 3,456 deaths: 2,675 “confirmed” deaths, 647 “clinically diagnosed” deaths, and 126 “suspicious” deaths.
According to Dali Yang of the University of Chicago, the February figures “were still relevant due to world perceptions.”
“They were still hoping that it would be like 2003, that it would be like a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that would eventually get controlled and things would go back to normal,” CNN told Yang.
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