A sharp upward revision in China’s coronavirus death toll on Friday was “an attempt to leave no case undocumented” after medical services in Wuhan were overwhelmed at the start of the outbreak, the World Health Organization said.
Nearly 1,300 people who died of the coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan, or half the total, were not counted in death tolls because of lapses, state media said on Friday, but Beijing dismissed claims that there had been any kind of cover-up.
Maria van Kerkhove, technical lead of the World Health Organization Health Emergencies Programme attends a news conference on the outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Geneva, Switzerland, on 16th March. PICTURE: Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters
US President Donald Trump has suggested that China has understated its toll of coronavirus deaths, and has condemned the WHO for the support it has given to China’s approach in the crisis. He suspended funding to the UN agency this week.
The virus has infected more than two million worldwide and killed 150,000, according to a Reuters tally.
Maria van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist who took part in an international mission to China in February, said of China’s revised figures: “This was done in attempt to leave no case undocumented.”
She said the Chinese authorities had gone back over data from funeral services, care homes, fever clinics, hospitals and detention centres, and patients who had died at home, in Wuhan, Hubei province where the outbreak began late last year.
“What they have reported is that the discrepancies in these cases were due to a number of factors. First is that the health care system in Wuhan was overwhelmed at one point. And some patients died at home,” van Kerkhove said.
“Secondly is that medical staff were delayed in reporting of these cases because they were focused on providing care for those patients and they didn’t fill out the forms in time,” she said.
Mild cases were treated in makeshift hospitals in Wuhan stadiums or other facilities, van Kerkhove said, adding: “In those situations the reporting wasn’t done in a timely manner and so those cases were added.”
It was important to know the number of people who had died from the disease and to have “accurate reporting”, which can be a challenge during an outbreak, she said.
“I would anticipate that many countries are going to be in a similar situation where they will have to go back and review records and look to see did we capture all of them,” she said.
Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergencies expert, said: “It is important that countries provide that data as quickly as they can in the interest of moving our collective efforts forward to control this pandemic.”
The virus is believed to have originated among wild animals on sale in a seafood market in Wuhan that has been closed since January. A common sight across Asia, wet markets traditionally sell fresh produce and live animals, such as fish, in the open air.
Any wet markets allowed to reopen after lockdowns must conform to stringent food and hygiene standards, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“Governments must rigorously enforce bans on trade of wildlife for food,” he said.
CORONAVIRUS LATEST
Reported cases of the coronavirus have crossed 2.18 million globally and 147,265 people have died, according to a Reuters tally as of 1400 GMT on Friday.
AMERICAS
• The United States has asked China to revise new export quality control rules for protective equipment needed in the outbreak so they are not an obstacle to timely supplies, a spokesman for the US State Department said.
• New York Governor Andrew Cuomo launched a blistering attack on President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis, accusing him of “passing the buck” to the states and favoring big business over communities hardest hit.
• The World Bank and International Monetary Fund should seek case-by-case solutions to ease debt burdens on middle-income countries hit by the pandemic, key shareholders said.
• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro called for the reopening of the country’s borders, as he pushes to restart South America’s largest economy.
• Mexico’s President urged medical workers aged 60 to 65 to return to their jobs and treat non-coronavirus patients, in a bid to help the health system handle an expected surge of demand from the virus.
• Gilead Sciences Inc increased enrollment target by 3,600 for a trial testing its experimental drug, remdesivir, in severe COVID-19 patients, a day after a media report said the drug was showing promise.
EUROPE
• Britain was too slow to react on a number of fronts to the outbreak and 40,000 people could die, a leading public health professor told lawmakers, a day after the UK’s hospital death toll rose to 14,576.
• France said there was no evidence so far of a link between the new coronavirus and the work of the P4 research laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the current pandemic started.
• Britain launched a new coronavirus taskforce to support efforts to make a vaccine available to the public as quickly as possible.
• Czech lawmakers took aim at the government’s decision to buy protective equipment from China to limit the outbreak and called for the next batch of supplies to come domestically or from closer to home.
• Ireland plans to expand its coronavirus testing capacity to 100,000 tests per week over the next 10 days as it considers easing stay-at-home restrictions on 5th May, Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan said.
• Dutch scientists have pulled a British-made East Radcliff ventilator built in the 1960s from the shelves of a science museum to use as a template for cheap and easy-to-build ventilators.
ASIA-PACIFIC
• A sharp upward revision in China’s coronavirus death toll on Friday was “an attempt to leave no case undocumented” after medical services in Wuhan were overwhelmed at the start of the outbreak, the World Health Organization said.
• Singapore is assessing whether to place recovered migrant workers on cruise ships rather than back in dormitories that have become infection hotbeds, despite problems controlling onboard outbreaks
• Japan said it hoped to start distributing relief payments next month, after extending a state of emergency nationwide.
• Indonesia surpassed the Philippines on Friday as the country reporting the most infections in South-East Asia.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
• Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti said Muslim prayers during Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr feast should be performed at home if the outbreak continues.
• Israel is heading off shortages of disposable surgical masks by mass-producing washable versions sized to fit everyone from children to bearded men.
• African leaders, the IMF and the World Bank appealed for rapid international action to help African countries respond to the coronavirus pandemic that will cause the continent’s economy to shrink by 1.25 per cent in 2020, the worst reading on record.
• Dubai has extended by one week a 24-hour-a-day curfew imposed as part of a sterilisation drive to control the spread of the coronavirus, the government said in a Twitter post.
ECONOMIC FALLOUT
• Global stocks rallied on President Donald Trump’s plans to revive the coronavirus-hit US economy and a report about a clinical trial for a potential drug to treat COVID-19.
• China’s economy contracted for the first time on record in the first quarter as the coronavirus shut down factories and shopping malls and put millions out of work.
• Fourteen Japanese companies have scrapped plans for initial public offerings this month, more than in the aftermath of the September, 2001, attacks on the United States.
• Hacking activity against corporations in the US and other countries more than doubled by some measures last month as digital thieves took advantage of security weakened by pandemic work-from-home policies, researchers said.
• US. airlines are estimated to be sitting on more than $US10 billion in travel vouchers that should have been cash refunds from canceled flights, a group of senators said.
– SARAH MORLAND and DEVIKA SYAMNATH
