Wuhan Medic Accuses Chinese Government of Underreporting Coronavirus Death Toll
Hospital worker says 'there are many more coronavirus deaths and infections than reported'
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A Wuhan medic dealing with the deadly coronavirus outbreak has spoken out to accuse the Chinese government of misleading the public on the true figures for deaths and infections of the virus.
Hospital worker Jeisi Luo - not his real name - says there are more deaths from coronavirus than reported, with patients dying from the symptoms before they can even be tested for the virus.
Luo also made the shocking claim that the official figures are massively underreported because the waiting list for diagnosis is too long.
China's official figures claim there are 24,000 cases in the country, with 13,522 of these recorded in the virus epicenter and surrounding Hubei province.
The actual figure is suspected to be far higher, however.
This news follows the video that emerged two weeks ago of a medical worker from the province claiming there are as many as 90,000 cases in the city.
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Separate footage filmed at Wuhan's Number Three hospital this week showed eight body bags loaded in a bus, with more allegedly added while the recorder was inside the hospital for five minutes.
Mr. Luo warned that the problem lies in an inability to carry out enough nucleic acid tests (NAT), which diagnose the virus.
"When preliminary tests determine that a patient has a lung sickness, the nucleic acid test which detects the virus, cannot always be carried out because the waiting list is too long," he told DW.
"The patient is therefore not diagnosed."
He said medics were dealing with this crisis by "prescribing medicine" and sending patients home to "self-isolate."
"The waiting rooms are full of people coughing," he said.
"Healthy people who have to wait in these conditions risk infection."
He added that China's emergency 120 number is totally overwhelmed and that, with insufficient taxis to take everyone to hospital, some sufferers are walking there to receive treatment.
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China has raced to build two hospitals with more than 1,000 beds to help it handle the crisis, as well as putting Wuhan in lock-down, according to The Daily Mail.
However, it is expected that the new hospitals will not provide high enough capacity as there won't be enough doctors and medical staff available to run them.
Pictures from inside the new hospital show rows and rows of beds next to each other.
Appeals have also gone out on social media for face masks and other essential supplies to be sent to the beleaguered city.
The virus has managed to spread to 27 other countries so far, with Belgium being the latest to report a case.
The number of cases in China jumped by more than 3,000 in a day yesterday.
Many nations including France and the US have flown their citizens out of China, and the UK foreign office has advised all 30,000 British nationals in the country to leave China.
