Hours after China revised up Wuhan death toll by 50 per cent, US President Donald Trump on Friday claimed that the actual number of fatalities from Coronavirus in the city was “far higher” and that it was “not even close”.
“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 tweeted.
He appeared to be referring to Wuhan’s abrupt increase in the number of deaths by 50 percent, though not “doubling,” as Trump claimed.
The new toll followed growing world doubts about Chinese transparency.
Wuhan city, which remained the epicentre of Coronavirus outbreak for a long time, on Friday abruptly raised its death toll by 50 per cent, admitting that many fatal cases were “mistakenly reported” or missed entirely, bringing the total number of deaths in the city to 3,869.
The Wuhan administration took to social media and posted that it had added 1,290 deaths to the tally in the city.
This change has raised the nationwide death toll up by nearly 39 per cent to 4,632, based on official national data released earlier on Friday.
City’s epidemic prevention and control headquarters has given several reasons for the missed cases, including the fact that the city’s medical staff were overwhelmed in the early days as infections climbed, leading to “late reporting, omissions or misreporting”.
It also cited insufficient testing and treatment facilities, and said some patients died at home and thus their deaths were not properly reported.
The United States (US) led Western nations and organisations have raised doubts about China’s transparency. It has come under increasing pressure over the Coronavirus pandemic from worldwide criticism. The US is probing whether the virus actually originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
China has maintained the COVID-19 virus emerged from a Wuhan food market whose merchandise reportedly included exotic wild animals sold for human consumption.
Earlier this month before China revised the death toll, President Donald Trump had cast doubts on the accuracy of Beijing’s numbers.
Trump had asked, “How do we know” if they are accurate. “Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side.”
US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien had told reporters that there was no way to confirm the Chinese figures.
“Unfortunately, we are just not in a position to confirm any of the numbers that are coming out of China. There’s no way to confirm any of those numbers,” he said.
“There’s lots of public reporting on whether the numbers are too low. You’ve got access to those reports that are coming out of the Chinese social media and some of the few reporters that are left in China. We just have no way to confirm any of those numbers,” O’Brien said.