Covid 19 coronavirus: Chinese government says Wuhan outbreak is 10 times higher than reported

It was long suspected that China may have manipulated the figures when it comes to the actual number of coronavirus infections the country suffered.

But now there appears to be evidence that during a critical phase of the pandemic, up to 10 times more people contracted Covid-19 than official figures indicate. Remarkably, this revelation comes from the Chinese government itself.

An infectious disease expert has said authorities did not give a “true appreciation of the infection and its size.”

Since the end of January, images of the Wuhan blockade circulated globally, a precursor to what would come in any country.

According to the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, the city where the coronavirus was first registered has registered a total of 50,354 cases in its more than 11 million inhabitants.

However, research recently published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) presents a very different picture.

It tested 34,000 people in Wuhan, the surrounding Hubei province, and several other cities outside the area, to see if they had antibodies to Covid-19, a sign that they would have contracted the virus.

“The investigation found that the positive rate for novel coronavirus antibodies in the Wuhan community population was 4.43 percent,” the report said.

They would suggest that nearly 500,000 people in Wuhan contracted Covid-19, 10 times more than the 50,000 officially registered.

Outside of Wuhan, the number dropped dramatically, with only two people in the study from the broader Hubei province having the antibodies.

“The survey results show that the (Chinese) population is generally at a low level of infection, indicating that the control of the epidemic with Wuhan as the main battlefield has been successful and effectively prevented the spread of large scale of the epidemic, “the CDC stated. .

Hugely underreported Wuhan numbers

Observers from China have said that the large number of underreporting on the actual number of cases is likely due to several factors. These include the lack of test kits, which means that many people with Covid-19 symptoms were never diagnosed as positive. This wasn’t just a Chinese problem: In the early days of the pandemic, many countries struggled to keep up with the demand for evidence with cases sneaking online.

But in China, there also appears to be a concerted effort to minimize the spread of the virus both to calm the public as, it has been suggested, due to the bloated nature of the Chinese government led by Xi Jinping and the desire not to. offend senior officials.

A CNN report from earlier this month found that, for a time, Wuhan officials routinely downplayed the number of coronavirus infections in numbers that were released to the public.

On February 10, 2,478 new Covid-19 cases were officially registered in Hubei, including Wuhan. However, a leaked confidential document seen by the US network showed that the actual number was 5,918 new cases, more than double.

The infections that lurked under the rug were what Chinese officials called “clinically diagnosed” cases. They were very prone to Covid and showed classic symptoms, but the patient had not undergone a test. In some cases, the patient was seriously ill and was being treated as if he had the disease, but they didn’t show up in the numbers.

These “clinically diagnosed” cases were often grouped into a category called “suspected cases” that were often reported many days later or were simply added to a running count that did not list new daily infections. Critics have said this may have been an attempt to make the outbreak seem more contained.

Speaking to CNN, Professor William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said Chinese officials “seemed to actually minimize the impact of the epidemic at any given time. Including patients who were suspected of having the infection would obviously have enlarged the size of the outbreak and would have given, I think, a more realistic appreciation of the nature of the infection and its size. “

It was only in late February that the definition of Covid-19 infection was expanded in China to include these cases.

Hierarchical order of the Communist Party

Another factor was the strict and complicated political hierarchy of the Communist Party when it comes to decisions on how to handle the pandemic.

That was one of the conclusions reached by Richard McGregor, who analyzed China’s reaction to Covid-19 in an article for the Australian think tank Lowy Institute.

“The CDC ranks below the National Health Commission, whose leaders in turn are under the heads of the provincial parties in the bureaucratic hierarchical order,” McGregor wrote in July.

“The city and provincial leaders needed permission from the party leadership and the central government in Beijing to make announcements of any severity.”

McGregor also said that officials in Hubei may have been willing to avoid announcing a deadly new virus during the Lunar New Year, an important and politically sensitive time.

“The whole system, beset by fear, uncertainty, cover-ups, bad faith and indecision on multiple levels, failed until the upper level finally realized the seriousness of the situation,” he wrote.

“The result was that the virus spread beyond Wuhan, to the rest of the country and then to the world, faster and faster than it should have.”

The CDC findings are consistent with a June US analysis that also suggested that infections were much higher than reported.

Academics at the US Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis were unable to test the Wuhan residents for antibodies. Instead, they examined the distribution of funeral urns and the capacity of cremation services in the city during the first months of the pandemic.

The non-peer-reviewed document said Covid-19 deaths were likely to be in the region of 36,000, more than 10 times the 2,500 reported deaths. As such, the infections were also likely to be at least 10 times greater.

“The magnitude of the discrepancy between our estimates based on cremation-related data and the official Chinese figures in early February suggests the need to re-evaluate China’s official statistics,” the US analysis said.

Doubts remain

There are still those who doubt the veracity of China’s Covid-19 figures. It may seem unbelievable that a large nation where the coronavirus first appeared is now almost completely free of it, outbreaks of bars here and there.

However, since the beginning of the pandemic, China has strengthened and standardized its Covid-19 reports. Research from the University of Oxford has concluded that while the early figures were “rigged,” the current figures appear genuine. And if the virus were widespread in the country right now, it would be hard to hide that neighborhoods are closed and the rise in hospital admissions.

Nonetheless, official figures emanating from Beijing – on everything from industrial production to GDP – have long been taken with a pinch of salt abroad.

It is claimed that there are strong reasons for officials to ensure that objectives are met, or appear to be achieved, for fear of embarrassing the Communist Party and its superiors.

The admission that Covid-19 infections in Wuhan could have been 10 times the official figure may lead some to believe that China’s experience with Covid-19 will never fully add up.