- Hubei’s total number of confirmed cases now stands at over 48,000, more than 1,300 deaths
China’s Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, reported an uptick of 14,840 confirmed coronavirus cases Thursday as health officials expanded the type of cases that it includes in its count. The province also reported 242 new deaths.
China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency announced Thursday that national health authorities issued revised guidelines to consider “clinically diagnosed” coronavirus cases in the confirmed total. Chinese officials previously only counted cases confirmed by nucleic acid tests, which critics said were faulty and greatly underestimated the true magnitude of the epidemic.
For weeks, Chinese doctors and patients have complained about a lack of nucleic acid testing kits and their accuracy. The dramatic jump in cases in Hubei essentially confirms longtime suspicions that China was for weeks vastly undercounting cases of the virus.
Hubei’s total number of confirmed cases now stands at more than 48,000, with more than 1,300 deaths. (Washington Post)
