Huge rise in coronavirus cases casts doubt over scale of epidemic
China reports 13,332 additional cases due to a change in how authorities are counting themCoronavirus: spike in cases due to change in diagnosis, says WHO – video
Sarah Boseley and Lily Kuo-The true scale of the epidemic caused by the new coronavirus in Hubei province has been thrown into doubt after the Chinese authorities reported more than 13,300 extra cases going back over an unknown number of days or weeks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said the huge jump in cases in Hubei, bringing the total to more than 60,000 worldwide, was due to a change in the way Chinese authorities was counting them.
Cases where doctors have seen chest infection on a CT scan are now being classed as coronavirus rather than just those confirmed by a lab test result, leading to a 254 rise in deaths to a total of 1,370 since the outbreak began. All but two of the deaths have been in China.
In addition to the 13,332 extra cases, Chinese authorities on Thursday reported a further 1,820 laboratory-confirmed cases.
The WHO is now working hard to try to get further details of when the extra cases of what is now being called Covid-19 occurred, to have a true picture of how the epidemic has been developing in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei.
“Most of these [additional] cases relate to a period going back days or weeks,” said Dr Michael Ryan, the WHO’s head of emergencies. “It is retrospective reporting. It is largely due to how cases are being diagnosed and reported.”
On the positive side, it meant Hubei’s doctors would be able to report cases more quickly because they no longer have to wait for lab confirmation, said Ryan.
The political fallout from the outbreak also escalated on Thursday with the firing of Hubei’s party chief, the party chief of Wuhan and the head of China’s Hong Kong and Macau affairs office. Ying Yong, the new party chief of Hubei, came up through the ranks in Zhejiang – where President Xi Jinping, previously served as party secretary – and was also part of anti-corruption campaigns, the president’s signature initiative.
“This is clearly Xi’s move,” said Dali Yang, a professor of political science focusing on China at the University of Chicago. “The stakes are high and he needed time to find the right people for the positions to salvage the Hubei, Wuhan situation.”
A man measures people’s body temperature at a roadblock in Guangzhou, China. Photograph: Alex Plavevski/EPA
On Wednesday, the state-run China Daily reported that a powerful Beijing official parachuted into Wuhan to supervise the fight against the virus had reprimanded local officials for failing to organise treatment quickly enough for people reporting to hospitals with symptoms.
Thursday’s jump in infections may have been another impetus for the purges. “I suspect Xi would have wanted the personnel change to project a sense that he is in control of the situation. The bad numbers undermine that message,” said Sam Crane, who teaches Chinese politics and ancient philosophy at Williams College in the US.
Prof Paul Hunter, a coronavirus expert from the University of East Anglia, said cases that in the past would only have been considered suspect would now fell into the confirmed bracket. Many would-be Covid-19 cases that would have been confirmed if lab tests had been done, but the figures would also include some people who had pneumonia not caused by the coronavirus.
