(CMR) The first wave of confirmed coronavirus infections in mainland China may have been four times higher than the officially reported figures, that's according to a study by Hong Kong researchers.
The Hong Kong researchers revealed that over 200,000 persons may have been infected with the coronavirus as opposed to the 55,000 cases reported by the country as of February 20.
“Changes of case definitions or laboratory testing capacity should be accounted for when analyzing an epidemic curve. In China, broadening the case definitions overtime allowed a greater proportion of infections to be detected as cases. Taking into account these changes, we estimated that there were at least 232 000 infections in the first epidemic wave of COVID-19 in mainland China,” read the study findings created by academics at the Hong Kong University School of Public Health and published in the Lancet.
“The true number of infections could still be higher than that currently estimated considering the possibility of under-detection of some infections, particularly those that were mild and asymptomatic, even under the broadest case definitions,” added the study.
China has reported just 83,878 cases of COVID-19 and 4,636 fatalities, according to numbers aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.
Those numbers have been treated with skepticism by many health officials and analysts, given that the illness was first reported late last year from the city of Wuhan.
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