The total number of coronavirus cases now stands at 50,333, with 3,869 deaths. The previously reported death toll for Wuhan was 2,579 deaths, so the revised death toll is a 50 percent increase. An additional 253 confirmed cases of the virus were added to the city’s tally.
As of Friday, April 17, China’s National Health Commission had reported 3,342 deaths nationally, before the revised Wuhan figures were published, according to CNN.
The Xinhua News Agency quoted an official with Wuhan’s epidemic headquarters as saying that during the early stages of the outbreak, “due to the insufficiency in admission and treatment capability, a few medical institutions failed to connect with the disease prevention and control system in time, while hospitals were overloaded,” and “as a result, belated, missed and mistaken reporting occurred.”
This is not the first time that health authorities in China have revised data related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The way cases were counted changed three times in January and February, leading to confusion and accusations of China attempting to downplay the severity of its virus outbreak.
There has been some question of how China is measuring asymptomatic cases of the coronavirus. Some patients who tested positive for the virus but did not show symptoms were not included in the tallies. China has confirmed nearly 84,000 coronavirus infections, the seventh-highest globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data, according to the BBC.
