President Donald Trump on Friday blasted China for abruptly raising the death toll from the coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan.
“China has just announced a doubling in the number of their deaths from the Invisible Enemy. It is far higher than that and far higher than the U.S., not even close!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
China has just announced a doubling in the number of their deaths from the Invisible Enemy. It is far higher than that and far higher than the U.S., not even close!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2020
The low number of reported deaths in China has long prompted suspicions from many experts, who have said that the death rate in Wuhan, ground zero for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, appeared far too low. In the Hubei province — which includes Wuhan, a city of more than 11 million residents — China initially said there were just 1,290 deaths.
But on Friday, Beijing raised Wuhan’s coronavirus death toll by nearly 50 percent after weeks of charges that communist party officials were underreporting the numbers. Now, China is reporting 3,869 deaths. The number of confirmed cases was also raised dramatically, from 325 to 50,333. That number accounts for two-thirds of China’s total 82,367 announced cases.
Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, though, reports that China has had 83,760 and 4,512 deaths. Both sets of numbers — from China and Johns Hopkins — are both likely well short of the actual numbers, experts say.
In the U.S., which has a population of about 328 million, there have been 671,493 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 33,288 deaths. That makes the numbers from China, a nation with 1.4 billion people, seem unusually low.
“Chinese state media claimed Friday that the reason for the sudden leap was that medical facilities were overwhelmed during the peak of the outbreak and because of that, ‘belated, missed and mistaken reporting occurred,'” Fox News reported.
“Due to the insufficiency in admission and treatment capability, a few medical institutions failed to connect with the disease prevention and control system in time, while hospitals were overloaded and medics were overwhelmed with patients,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
“The data released by Wuhan reflects openness and transparency and an attitude of seeking truth from facts,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Friday.
But Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) blasted China after the new numbers were released.
“Well, well, well: After repeatedly defending the accuracy of their data, Chinese officials revise the coronavirus death toll in Wuhan to 3,869, 50% higher than previously reported,” he wrote on Twitter.
Well, well, well: After repeatedly defending the accuracy of their data, Chinese officials revise the coronavirus death toll in Wuhan to 3,869, 50% higher than previously reported https://t.co/aY0drUkKw2 via @WSJ
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) April 17, 2020
U.S. officials have long suspected that China is cooking the books over the number of deaths from SARS-CoV-2.
“China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials,” Bloomberg News reported in early April.
The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret, and they declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake. The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials said.