The World Health Organization has defended China’s abrupt revision of coronavirus numbers, saying Beijing made it to provide more accurate figures and that other countries will likely have to review theirs as well.
The new tally “was done in an attempt to leave no case undocumented,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s lead scientist on coronavirus, said during a news briefing on Friday.
Earlier in the day, Beijing released updated figures on the outbreak, which showed the death toll of the coronavirus ground zero, the city of Wuhan, up by nearly 1,300. After the revision, China’s total death toll stands at 4,632.
Coronavirus figures of other countries might experience similar abrupt changes as well, Van Kerkhove said, stressing that the accurate count is crucial for better understanding of the scale of the pandemic.
“This is something that is a challenge in an ongoing outbreak, to identify all of your cases and to identify all of your deaths as an outbreak happens, especially if systems are overwhelmed,” she said.
The revision comes amid the mounting accusations against China and the WHO of conspiring to “cover up” the extent of the coronavirus crisis, spread by the top US officials with little of any evidence to back up such claims.
US President Donald Trump, who slashed the US funding for the WHO earlier this week, accused the organization of colluding with Beijing to downplay the threat and mislead the world on the coronavirus.
The number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 has surpassed the 2.2 million mark worldwide, while more than 150,000 people have succumbed to the disease, according to the latest tally by the Johns Hopkins University.
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