While the Coronavirus pandemic forced government authorities to impose stricter safety measures, affecting the global economy and forcing millions of people to be at home, US President Donald Trump accused other countries of lying about the number of COVID-19 deaths.
Trump made these comments on April 15 after the US reposted most Coronavirus fatalities in the world with maximum infection cases. He said during White House press briefing that "Does anybody really believe the numbers of some of these countries."
The Coronavirus pandemic
During the press conference, Trump also hit China, which is now facing allegations for not being transparent with global communities about the Coronavirus outbreak initially after it emerged in Wuhan. He said that "Do you think the numbers in this vast country called China -- they have a certain number of cases -- is anybody really believe that?"
Apart from Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron has also questioned China's handling of the coronavirus outbreak. He said that things "happened that we don't know about".
As per previous reports, a stack of urns at a Wuhan funeral home, the city's official cremation rates and reports of an overwhelmed healthcare facilities have prompted speculation that the real COVID-19 death toll in Wuhan could be in the tens of thousands. Later, on Friday reports revealed that China's coronavirus epicentre Wuhan abruptly raised its death toll by 50 percent as authorities said that many fatal cases were "mistakenly reported" or missed entirely during the outbreak which brings the total number of deaths in the city to 3,869 from 1,290.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government also introduced new rules for research on Coronavirus as from now onwards all the studies related to COVID-19 origin will be published lonely after science and technology ministry's approval.
Death toll controversy
While China reported around 83,700 infection cases and over 3,300 fatalities in the country, many experts, as well as world leaders have expressed their doubts on these numbers and claimed that the actual numbers are higher than the CCP reported. They also accused China of downplaying the Coronavirus pandemic's reach.
Earlier, the controversy over China's death toll was fuelled by a report which revealed that more than 21 million cell phone accounts were cancelled while in past three months 840,000 landlines were closed in China. This information gave an idea that probably these closed numbers belonged to the people who died due to the Coronavirus. But as of now, Beijing did not give any clarification behind this information.
Even recent reports have revealed that in the UK, NHS doctors are asked via a new guideline that they don't have to mention COVID-19 as a cause of death on a Coronavirus patient's death certificate instead "pneumonia or community-acquired pneumonia is acceptable."
While talking to media, Trump, who is known as the biggest critic of China, said "We report everything, we report the cases and our reporting is good, we are reporting every death," and while citing China's numbers he said, "Some countries that are in big trouble and they are not reporting the facts. All I know is we report the facts and we are a country that's getting better."
He also argued that country's governors are eager to relax social distancing measures as the country has 'passed the peak' of new Coronavirus cases. During the White House briefing "You already know we'll be opening up some states, some states much sooner than others and we think that some states can actually open up before the deadline May 1."
