The novel coronavirus outbreak in eastern China’s Shandong province is much worse than the officially reported, according to a series of internal government documents obtained by The Epoch Times.
Between Feb. 9 to 23, Shandong authorities underreported the number of infections every day, according to internal data compiled by the Shandong Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). The latter kept a tally of the number of patients who tested positive for the virus during nucleic acid testing—using a diagnostic kit to test body samples and detect whether they contain the virus’s genetic sequence
The Shandong CDC daily new infection numbers ranged from being 1.36 times to 52 times greater than the officially published data by the Shandong health commission and China’s National Health Commission.
As of Feb. 25, the Shandong government stated that there were a total of 755 infections in the province. But the internal document showed that 1,992 people had tested positive for the virus via nucleic acid testing as of Feb. 23.
The government publicly stated that there were four newly diagnosed coronavirus patients on Feb. 22, but the internal document said that 61 patients were diagnosed with the virus that day.
In recent days, official data has shown new infections leveling off. For example, on Feb. 25, the National Health Commission reported only a total of nine new diagnosed cases outside of Hubei province, where the outbreak is most severe.
In fact, Shandong alone had new infections in the double digits daily. On Feb. 20, new infections spiked, with 274 testing positive. – READ MORE
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