China has revised the total number of coronavirus-related deaths in ground-zero, Wuhan, China, and the figure has abruptly risen to 50% as the number is now nearly 4,000.
Wuhan Revises their COVID-19 Death Toll
According to a report by The New York Times, the city government of Wuhan added 1,290 deaths to their COVID-19 death toll, bringing the total to 3,869.
The announcement has been made through their social media account after a "city-wide investigation."
The sudden rise of the number has also pushed the nationwide COVID-19 death toll by nearly 39%, bringing the total to 4,632 confirmed deaths, based on the national figure that was released last week.
Besides the death toll, the government has also added 325 cases to the total of confirmed coronavirus infections in the city, according to CNBC, while the national total is now 82,692 from 82,367 cases.
How Did the Discrepancies Come to be?
The Wuhan government has listed four explanations as to why the discrepancies happened.
Among the reasons they provided was that many of the COVID-19 patients died at their homes at the early stages of the outbreak due to the shortage of medical supplies and inadequate treatment capacity of the city.
Additionally, they reported that the hospitals in Wuhan were greatly overwhelmed, causing the delay, erroneous, or missing reports of coronavirus cases and deaths.
The notice was given out by the government also admitted that some healthcare institutions that were handling patients with coronavirus failed to provide timely updates of the number of cases they were handling and the COVID-19 deaths that occurred.
Lastly, they also admitted that registrations of the deaths were either misreported or repeated.
The government said the revision is to show "accountability to history, to the people, and the victims" and to guarantee that they are open and transparent about their information.
All Eyes on China
However, it seems like the move came after the mounting skepticism over the official number of China's cases and deaths emerged, especially as the novel coronavirus was believed to have originated in Wuhan, China.
The CIA told the White House previously that China has vastly understated their total figures, but they are unaware of the exact figures.
British foreign secretary Dominic Raab told Reuters that China would have to "answer hard questions after the coronavirus crisis is over regarding the health crisis that the whole world is suffering from currently.
"There's no doubt: we can't have business as usual after this crisis, and we'll have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and about how it could've been stopped earlier," Raab said.
In addition, French President Emmanuel Macron also believes that "there are clearly things that have happened that we don't know about," according to Financial Times.
Nevertheless, Beijing is adamant that they have been transparent with their communication about the coronavirus epidemic since it first broke out.
As of writing, there are a total of 2,193,558 confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the world, with the total number of deaths of 147,378. Meanwhile, the number of recoveries is now at 555,533.
There are currently no treatments nor vaccines against COVID-19.
