New ‘lung imaging’ test sees numbers spike, with total infections of Covid-19 now at 60,000 as China starts sacking health officials
Florist Zhao Yuanyuan arranges flowers in her shop in Shanghai, China, ahead of Valentine’s Day. Picture: AFP/NOEL CELISChina’s official death toll and infection numbers from the coronavirus spiked dramatically on Thursday after authorities changed their counting methods, fueling concern that the epidemic is far worse than is being reported.
The virus has had huge ramifications globally since emerging from the central Chinese province of Hubei last month, with many countries banning travellers from China in a bid to stop people spreading the disease. Hubei authorities said the huge increase was because they had broadened their definition for cases to include people “clinically diagnosed” via lung imaging. Up until now, authorities had been documenting cases using a more sophisticated laboratory test. The commission said it looked into past suspected cases and revised their diagnoses, suggesting that older cases were included in Thursday’s numbers.
Authorities in Hubei have been accused of concealing the gravity of the outbreak in late December and early January. The death of an infected doctor who had tried to raise the alarm about the outbreak then, but was silenced by authorities, triggered an outpouring of anger in China.On Thursday, the leaders of Hubei and Wuhan were sacked, the highest-profile political scalps of the crisis. Hubei’s two top health officials had already been sacked this week.
Yun Jiang, a China researcher at Australian National University, said the new methodology may be a “practical measure” because Hubei has a shortage of laboratory testing kits. “I don’t think the numbers are necessarily manipulated for political purposes but the numbers themselves may not be so trustworthy.
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