When the outbreak first emerged in Wuhan two months ago, China’s system of reporting new cases was straightforward enough. (Separately, China’s health commission on February 14 said it removed 108 deaths from its total count to correct some double-counting in Hubei province, which doesn’t appear to have stemmed from the methodology change.) China’s total cases soared by more than 19,000 — from 51,174 on February 16 to 70,635 the next day, according to WHO data. On Friday, state news agency Xinhua reported that an official for the province’s health commission directed officials to stop retroactively deleting confirmed cases from the province’s official count. While revising diagnostic methodology makes sense when tracing a rapidly evolving outbreak, China’s lost a lot of credibility and faith in the accuracy of its data with its swift and frequent changes, international researchers say.

Source: The Standard February 27, 2020 05:30 UTC