China acknowledged on Friday that the coronavirus death toll in the one-time epicenter city of Wuhan was nearly 50 per cent higher than reported, underscoring just how seriously the official numbers of infections and deaths around the world may be understating the dimensions of the disaster.
Such figures can have a huge influence on governments’ actions, as medical staffs struggle to figure out how to cope with surges of sick people and officials make crucial decisions about where to devote resources and how to begin easing lockdowns to resuscitate their economies.
As virus deaths mounted — with the U.S. reporting its highest one-day death toll yet at nearly 4,600 — the economic devastation from the restrictions is becoming even more shocking.
The number of people applying for unemployment benefits in the U.S. rose by 5.2 million, bringing the four-week total to a staggering 22 million. China’s economy shrank 6.8% in the quarter ending in March compared with the same period a year ago, its worst contraction since market-style economic reforms began in 1979. And in Europe, car sales tanked 55% last month.
Authorities say infections and deaths have been under-reported almost everywhere. Thousands have died with COVID-19 symptoms — many in nursing homes, which have been ravaged by a disease that hits the elderly the hardest — without being tested. Four months into the outbreak, nations are still struggling to increase their testing capacity, and many are still far from their goal. Spain on Friday ordered the country’s 17 autonomous regions to adopt uniform criteria on counting the dead. The country has recorded more than 19,000 deaths, but the system leaves out patients who had symptoms but were not tested before they died.
“We are probably only seeing the tip of the iceberg,” said Barcelona University epidemiologist Antoni Trilla, who heads the Spanish government’s expert panel on the epidemic. Italian officials have acknowledged that the country’s official COVID-19 death toll of more than 22,000 — second only to that of the United States — understates the true number, primarily because it doesn’t include the hundreds of dead in nursing homes who were not tested.
Britain’s official death toll, which is approaching 14,000, has come under increasing scrutiny because it does not include any deaths at home or in nursing homes. The country’s statistics agency has indicated the actual number of dead could be around 15% higher. Other experts think it will end up being a lot more than that. Anthony Costello, a professor at the Institute for Global Health at University College London, said Britain could see 40,000 deaths by the time the first wave of the outbreak is over.
In Russia, authorities reported relatively low numbers of cases until late March. That raised suspicions, given the country’s history of concealing embarrassing truths. Doctors treating coronavirus patients in Moscow said last week that the vast majority of all pneumonia cases in Russia are probably caused by the new virus.