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BEIJING: The number of coronavirus cases in the city where the outbreak was first detected may have been 10 times higher than official figures suggest, according to a study by Chinese health authorities in Wuhan.
About 4.4 percent of the city’s 11 million residents had developed antibodies against the pathogen that causes COVID-19 in April, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CDC) report.
That correlates with around 480,000 infections in Wuhan in April, nearly 10 times the official count to date of 50,000 cases in the central Chinese city.
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China has faced a barrage of criticism at home and abroad for its initial handling of the virus, including attempts to silence whistleblowers and not report any cases for days in early January amid high-level political consultations. .
On Monday (December 28), citizen journalist Zhang Zhan was jailed for four years for reporting on conditions inside Wuhan during the height of the outbreak.
The discrepancy revealed by the CDC data may “point to possible underreporting due to the chaos of late January and early February, when large numbers of people were not tested or were not accurately tested for COVID-19,” Huang Yanzhong, a senior global health researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told AFP.
The CDC added that only 0.44 percent of the population in central Hubei province outside of Wuhan exhibited antibodies to the virus, suggesting that the 77-day lockdown in the city may have helped prevent the spread of the virus. disease.
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The findings of the survey of more than 34,000 people nationwide conducted in April were only released late on Monday.
China does not include asymptomatic cases in its official count, which could also explain the discrepancy between the total confirmed cases and the actual number infected.
The total number of cases in the country is 87,027 with 4,634 deaths, according to data from the National Health Commission on Wednesday.
China has largely curbed the virus at home and was the only major economy to report positive economic growth this year as restrictions on business and domestic travel were lifted.
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Even in Wuhan, “the rate is not as high as New York City (23 percent in September), which may suggest that the (Chinese) government’s containment efforts were swift and effective,” Huang said.
Authorities also rushed to test tens of millions of people to stamp out local mini-outbreaks.
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