WHO’s emergencies director, urged nations to produce precise data as early as possible, “Allows us to project forward in a much more accurate way”
SWITZERLAND| On Friday, The World Health Organisation claims that once the pandemic will be under control many countries will be seen revising up their death counts.
Wuhan, the epicentre of COVID-19, revised their death toll and admitted their mistake while tallying the death numbers. After announcing the real numbers the rate of death count across the globe seen rising by 50%. This behaviour of China rose many questions regarding the transparency of Chinese over the pandemic.
The WHO said Wuhan had been overwhelmed by the virus, which emerged in the city in December, and the authorities had been too swamped to ensure every death and infection was properly recorded.
Officials in Wuhan initially tried to cover up the outbreak. Punishing doctors who had raised the alarm online, and there have been questions about the government’s recording of infections as it repeatedly changed its counting criteria at the peak of the crisis.
Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, told a virtual press conference in Geneva, “This is something that is a challenge in an ongoing outbreak: to identify all of your cases and all of your deaths”.
Kerkhova further added, “I would anticipate that many countries are going to be in a similar situation where they will have to go back and review records and look to see: did we capture all of them?”
She said the Wuhan authorities had now reviewed their databases and cross-checked for discrepancies.
Wuhan rereleases their death numbers which were 1,290, raising the total to 3,869 and added a further 325 cases, which rose the number of infections to 50,333.
Kerkhova also said that because Wuhan’s healthcare system was swamped, some patients died at homes, others were in makeshift facilities and medics, focused on treating patients, therefore did not do that paperwork on time.
Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies director, added: “All countries will face this”.
But he urged nations to produce precise data as early as possible, “because that keeps us on top of what the impact is, and allows us to project forward in a much more accurate way.”
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