Have the Chinese authorities deliberately reduced the number of patients with the new coronavirus at the very start of the pandemic?
While the Trump administration has repeatedly accused Beijing of delaying in releasing crucial data on the virus, CNN reveals the contents of a 117-page report stamped "
internal document, keep confidential
" from the Control Center and disease prevention program in Hubei, the Chinese province where the first official cases of Covid-19 appeared around the Wuhan seafood market.
And this document clearly suggests that China has intentionally underestimated the gravity of the situation.
The controversy over the figures announced by the Chinese authorities is not new, even if Beijing has always completely denied the accusations of the United States on this subject.
From the start of spring, many experts felt that this data was largely underestimated, relying in particular on the unusual number of families who came to collect funeral urns when the confinement in Wuhan was lifted.
The document revealed by CNN would however provide a first concrete proof.
In question, according to the experts quoted by the American chain: a dysfunctional information feedback system, "
a recurring instinct pushing to suppress bad news
" and a desire to hide the lack of preparation of local health care organizations.
Read also: Covid-19: why China defeated the virus and us, no
Two main pieces of information emerge from this confidential report: on the one hand, the figures published at the start were reduced: the local health authorities in Hubei province, for example, identified "
a total of 5,918 cases newly detected on February 10, or more. double the official number of publicly confirmed cases
”which was 2,478,“
breaking down the total into various subcategories
”such as“
confirmed cases
”,“
clinically diagnosed cases
”or“
suspected cases
”.
Officially reported cases and cases listed in the confidential document, February 10, 2020. CNN
Ditto for the number of deaths linked to Covid-19: on March 7, Hubei recorded 2,986, while in the internal report cited by CNN, this number climbed to 3,456, including 2,675 confirmed deaths.
Twenty times more cases of influenza
On the other hand, and this is probably the most puzzling information: still in this confidential document which covers the period from October 2019 to April 2020, Hubei was faced from the beginning of December with a major epidemic. flu, with twenty times more cases than the previous year!
Something to sow doubt, the symptoms of influenza and Covid-19 can often be similar.
And it was not in Wuhan that this flu epidemic was strongest, but in two other cities, Yichang, located about 300 km away, and Xianning (90 km).
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CNN recalls that no link has been established today between these cases of influenza and the coronavirus;
Yanzhong Huang, a specialist in health issues in China quoted by the channel, nevertheless believes that this peak of the flu epidemic may have at least had an impact on the start of that of Covid-19: "
People were going to the hospitals for treatment, increasing the risk of Covid-19 infection
”.
The country's health authorities conducted retrospective research into influenza cases dating from early October 2019 at two hospitals in Wuhan, but were unable to detect Sars-CoV-2 until January 2020.
If there is no official confirmation today, most experts agree in any case that the Wuhan market was not necessarily the cradle of the virus, but rather a place of "
superpropagation
".
A WHO report recalls that out of around 40 cases identified at the start of the epidemic, only 70% of them had a link with this market.
