CNN reports that in a report from the Hubei Center for Disease Control and Prevention, labeled “internal document, please keep confidential,” the local health department in Hubei Province, where the cases were first discovered, listed the total number of newly discovered cases as 5,918 as of February 10, double the number of confirmed cases officially made public, and broke the total down into multiple categories. subcategory. This larger figure was never fully disclosed at the time, as China seemed to downplay the severity of the epidemic during the initial confusion of the outbreak.
According to the paper, the initial outbreak of neoconvalescent pneumonia in Wuhan was handled chaotically by local authorities, with apparently poor decision-making at several critical junctures, resulting in a three-week delay in the diagnosis of the novel virus, “misleading” announcements about new cases and deaths, and ultimately a global pandemic.
In a January 10 document, officials reported to their superiors that the SARS test was ineffective and often resulted in false negatives, when it was reported that only 30 to 50 percent of the tests performed at the time were positive. This, coupled with the fact that China’s initial definition of confirmed cases did not include suspected cases, led to an underestimation of the severity of the epidemic, and it was not until mid-February that the definition was changed to include clinical diagnosis.
Although the Chinese authorities continued to emphasize that the epidemic was “preventable and controllable,” this was not the case at all, and the data released to the public about the epidemic differed from the information circulating internally on many occasions. According to internal leakages, health units initially took an average of 23 days to diagnose a confirmed patient, which was related to insufficient funding and staffing, low morale, and a bureaucratic system that severely delayed follow-up surveillance and the introduction of antiviral treatments as part of the “preventable and controllable” approach.
CNN pointed out that the documents show that China’s handling of the epidemic was grossly inappropriate in many ways, including continuing to use the same tactics it used to deal with the SAR outbreak in 2003, and concealing the fact that Hubei province experienced a wave of influenza outbreaks last December, which CNN suggested might be the tip of the iceberg.
The documents reveal that Hubei Province entered its peak influenza season last December, and compared to the same period in 2018, there was a 2,059% spike in influenza cases the week of December 2, with thousands of people infected in Wuhan, Yichang, and Xianning, among other places.
CNN notes that the documents constitute the most significant internal leak in China since the beginning of the epidemic, and provide the first clear window into what local authorities knew internally and when they knew it, revealing numerous inconsistencies between what Chinese authorities thought was happening and what was revealed to the public.
CNN states that the classified documents were obtained from a “whistle blower” claiming to work in China’s public defense system, and CNN, along with several experts, a European security expert, and the use of rigorous computer analysis, have confirmed the authenticity of the documents in question.
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