Wuhan virus cases may be 10 times higher than reported: Study

BEIJING, Dec 30: The number of coronavirus cases in the Chinese city where the pathogen was first detected may have been 10 times higher than official figures suggest, according to a study by health authorities in Wuhan.
About 4.4 percent of the city's 11 million residents had developed antibodies against the virus causing Covid-19 by April, the report by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control (CDC) said.
That correlates to around 480,000 infections in Wuhan by April, nearly 10 times the official tally to date of 50,000 cases in the city.
China has faced a barrage of criticism at home and abroad over its initial handling of the virus, including attempts to silence whistle-blowers and not reporting any cases for days in early January amid high-level political consultations. On Monday, citizen journalist Zhang Zhan was jailed for four years for reporting on conditions inside Wuhan during the height of the outbreak.
The discrepancy revealed by the CDC's data may "point to potential underreporting due to the chaos in late January and early February, when a large number of people were not tested or were not tested accurately for Covid-19," Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told AFP.
Qin Ying, a serological expert from the CDC told AFP on Wednesday that disparities in data were not unique to China.    -AFP