A latest leaked database from a Chinese military-run university has exposed dubious claims made by China regarding the number of the affected person due to the coronavirus as the leaked data suggests that at least 640,000 people have affected contrary to the claims of only 84,000 coronavirus infections in the country.
According to the reports, a database leaked from the Chinese-military run National University of Defence Technology in the city of Changsha suggested the country could have 640,000 cases.
However, the country has reported only 84,029 positive cases of coronavirus, which had resulted in widespread scepticism over the authenticity of claims made by the Chinese establishment. The information comes from a database leaked to Foreign Policy and 100 Reporters, which carried out a brief analysis of the information it contained.
Data leaks of information regarding confirmed cases in China
The reports suggest that the data leaks contains entries of 640,000 individual collected by authorities from at least 230 cities spread across the country. Each entry contains latitude, longitude, and ‘confirmed’ number of cases at the location on a specific date, which ranges from early February to late April.
The locations traced include not only hospitals but also apartment compounds, hotels, supermarkets, railway stations, restaurants, schools and even a branch of KFC. Assuming that each entry has at least one case, that would mean that at least a minimum 640,000 cases of the virus have been recorded in China.
Experts believe that the number could also be much higher. According to the people who have access to such a database said that a single data entry contains two cases of the virus. The data may also be lower as the methodology is not clear and some cases may have been counted several times.
US suspected under-reporting by Chinese
The latest data leak comes at a time when the US had asserted that China was hiding the true amount of its citizens who had been killed by the virus, as well as how many had been infected. The US officials had earlier stated that a White House report concluded China’s official figures were fake.
Last month, United States President Donald Trump during his daily briefing, said, “China’s number one by a lot. It’s not even close. They’re way ahead of us in terms of death.”
Following the outrage, China had also revised its numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths by 50 per cent in Wuhan city – the epicentre of coronavirus after which the total number went up to 50,333 and the number of fatalities up by 1,290 to 3,869.
