Wuhan abruptly raises coronavirus death toll by 50%, admits many cases were missed in early days of outbreak
The coronavirus death toll in the Chinese city of Wuhan — the first epicenter of the outbreak and where it is believed to have originated — was revised on Friday with a staggering 50 percent increase.
State officials are attributing the drastic increase from 2,579 to 3,869 fatalities to insufficient admission capabilities at hospitals when the outbreak peaked in the city.
Meanwhile, cases in the city have also been adjusted to 50,333, which accounts for over 60 percent of those infected in all of China, the New York Post reports.
The revised numbers come just days after it emerged that the Chinese government had waited six days before warning its own citizens about the gravity of Wuhan's outbreak.
There are growing international concerns that deaths in China have been under-reported, with several questions being raised about how Beijing handled the epidemic, especially in its early stages.
Furthermore, the death toll increase of almost exactly 50% has some analysts wondering whether it is all a little too neat to be true. The veracity of China's official coronavirus statistics has been questioned for months now.
It is speculated that some Chinese officials may have under-reported deaths and infections deliberately so they could give the impression that they were successfully managing the crisis.
However, the implausibly small figures have resulted in a sense of distrust for the Chinese government among world leaders.
Meanwhile, authorities in Wuhan still maintain there had been no arbitrary misrepresentation of data. According to them, the stabilization in the emergency finally gave them time to revisit reported cases and add any they may have previously missed.
Chinese President Xi Jinping warned citizens about the virus nearly a week after Chinese officials had privately determined on January 14 that the virus had already evolved into an epidemic, the Associated Press reported based on infection data.
Those critical days saw more than 3,000 people in Wuhan get infected with the novel coronavirus, while millions of Chinese citizens traveled domestically as well as internationally for Lunar New Year celebrations.
Having said that, the first case of the coronavirus in Wuhan was officially reported on December 31.
This week, US President Donald Trump halted funding for the WHO, accusing the UN agency of mishandling the outbreak and being "China-centric."
"Do you really believe those numbers in this vast country called China, and that they have a certain number of cases and a certain number of deaths; does anybody really believe that?" Trump questioned at the White House on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron also raised concerns regarding China's reportage amid the coronavirus outbreak. According to him, it was "naive" to suggest the country had dealt better with the crisis and that things "happened that we don't know about."
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab also chimed in on Thursday. "We'll have to ask the hard questions about how [coronavirus] came about and how it couldn't have been stopped earlier," he said.
The novel coronavirus -- medically known as SARS-CoV-2 -- has since spread across the globe, infecting over 2.2 million people and causing more than 150,000 fatalities as of Friday morning, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.