As the deadly coronavirus continues to spread rampantly across the globe, with thousands of people dying every single day, China continues to report an implausible death toll, despite reporting a spike in COVID-19 infections on Monday. This alleged secrecy is slowly eroding whatever little credibility the country has left.
Is China lying about its coronavirus death toll?
China, which has a population of 1.4 billion people and is considered to be the epicentre of the global pandemic, has only reported an unlikely 3,345 deaths. In comparison, the United States, which has a population of 328 million, there have been more than 23,500 deaths.
According to data obtained from the Johns Hopkins University, US deaths per 100,000 stand at 7.19 whereas in China the number was significantly lower at 0.25. The idea that Beijing is still claiming it has so few deaths has raised serious doubts over the numbers China reports to the world.
For that scenario to be true, COVID-19 would have had to miraculously bypass more than 1.3 billion people across the mainland as people travelled freely in and out of Wuhan, where the deadly outbreak originated, from the start of November to until the Jan 23 lockdown.
China is losing credibility
So far, the number of infections around the world have crossed the 1.9 million mark. Countries are at different stages of the outbreak and are trying to flatten the curve by mimicking some of the stringent policies and emergency measures implemented by other countries, which have reported a decline in their COVID-19 deaths, such as lockdowns and social distancing orders.
Since the outbreak originated in China, the information released by the Xi Jinping-led nation has been critical to the global community but the world can no longer count on Beijing's data.
According to Fox News, skepticism over China's numbers has reached its peak, fueled by official efforts to suppress bad news in the early days and a general distrust of the government.
Huge lines of people waiting to collect the ashes of their loved ones from funeral homes, reports of locals saying crematoriums have been burning hundreds of bodies around the clock, and hospitals overwhelmed with sick and dying patients have raised suspicion over China's official numbers.
Continued secrecy is making matters worse
China's insistence that everything is under control is just making matters worse. As we previously reported, Beijing recently imposed harsh restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the coronavirus.
A leaked government directive and online notices, published but later removed by two Chinese universities, revealed that academic papers on COVID-19 will be subject to extra scrutiny before being submitted for publication.
China's continued cover-up attempts of everything COVID-19 related isn't boding well for the Asian country. While there's no conclusive evidence to a cover-up by China's ruling Communist Party, there is reason to believe that a lot more people have died of coronavirus in China than the government is letting on.
