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Keegan Elmer

Officials in Hubei, the province at the epicentre of the Covid-19 epidemic, have said officials will be punished for reducing the number of confirmed cases after changes to the way they are tallied resulted in widespread confusion.
Tu Yuanchao, deputy director of the Hubei provincial health committee, issued the warning after the authorities decided to allow clinically diagnosed cases to be counted before reversing the decision the following week.
The initial change, which allowed cases diagnosed through CAT scans and other methods, to be counted from February 13 onwards, saw almost 15,000 cases added the tally on a single day.
But on Thursday this week they reverted to the previous method, and the local health authority removed 279 previously confirmed from the list.
Sharp fall in new Chinese coronavirus cases, but is it only because of new counting method?
The authority justified the removal by saying that laboratory tests had found no trace of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
It also said the change in diagnostic criteria was in line with a new treatment plan released by the National Health Commission on Wednesday, in which only positive laboratory tests would be counted.
Laboratory tests are seen as the most reliable way of confirming the presence of the coronavirus, because patients suffering from flu and other related illnesses will show similar symptoms in a CAT scan.


But there are concerns that lab tests have also produced false negatives – some patients were tested three or four times before giving a positive – which prompted the decision to allow clinical diagnoses to be included in the total.
 “Overall, the adjustments in the data have aroused great concern in society, and raised doubts about the data,” said Tu.
He continued that the province’s new party secretary Ying Yong had said he would not tolerate “any subtraction” of confirmed cases and said “all deductions must be added back”.


Ying, the former mayor of Shanghai, was sent to Hubei last week, after his predecessor Jiang Chaoling became the most senior figure to be removed over the handling of the outbreak.
“For those responsible, we must find facts, and take accountability seriously. We will then further discipline and strictly manage [those responsible] to ensure that the data on the epidemic is open, transparent, timely, and accurate,” said Tu.
“To adjust to the [new] treatment plan, some cities and prefectures revised their previously reported clinically diagnosed cases according to the sixth edition diagnosis and treatment protocol, and subtracted some of the cases. We stopped this practice on February 20,” said Tu.
He gave no numbers of how many cases had been removed and did not offer any adjustments to the official figures.
Chinese state media ‘humiliating’ women nurses in coronavirus propaganda campaign
Adding to the confusion, on Friday Hubei issued two different figures for the number of new cases, adding around 200 infected prisoners to its initial tally to give a final total of 631.
There have now been more than 62,000 confirmed cases in the province.
Chen Yixin, head of the Communist Party’s political and legal affairs watchdog, who was recently flown in to Hubei to handle the crisis, said recently that there were still “many weak links and shortcomings” in the data.
In a report published on the body’s social media accounts on Friday Chen said problems such as inconsistent standards, inaccurate data, and late reporting “urgently need to be addressed.”
“For example, the statistical criteria for new confirmed cases, and clinically diagnosed cases, have been changed many times over and over, and are very irregular,” he said. “This is misleading for people, and has an adverse effect on society, and causes passivity in those in command.”

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Coronavirus pandemic

Chinese province tries to end coronavirus confusion after telling officials they cannot remove confirmed cases from list

Only confirmed lab tests are now included in the figures. Photo: Xinhua

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China

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Hubei leaders say previously confirmed cases must stay on the list because removing them caused people to doubt the figures
Covid-19 diagnoses that were not confirmed by a lab test were permitted one week then banned the next



Hubei leaders say previously confirmed cases must stay on the list because removing them caused people to doubt the figures
