Has India surpassed source China's Covid count? Leaked data suggests it's not even close

Sharing an international report on Sunday morning, Ram Madhav,  National General Secretary of the BJP said that China is not revealing the real numbers of the Coronavirus cases. The report claimed that a leaked data from the National University of Defence Technology in the city of Changsha suggests China's total maybe 640,000. However, officially the country has only reported 84,029 cases. 

The leaked data reportedly contains 640,000 individual entries taken from at least 230 cities spread across the country. Each entry contains latitude, longitude, and 'confirmed' number of cases at the location on a specific date, which range from early February to late April. The locations include hospitals but also apartment compounds, hotels, supermarkets, railway stations, restaurants, schools and even a branch of KFC. Assuming that each entry contains at least one case, that would mean at least 640,000 cases of the virus which have been recorded, the report says explaining the leaked data.

Madhav shared the study a day after India's coronavirus total crossed China's official figures. As per the latest update by India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India has 90,927 Covid cases and 2872 deaths, with 34,109 people having recovered.

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US blames China 

The Trump administration has been blaming China for the spread of the novel coronavirus and for hiding its outbreak from the world. In its latest attack, US President Donald Trump threatened to put a complete end to ties with China over the latter's alleged reluctance in sharing full information regarding COVID-19.

Blaming the World Health Organisation (WHO) for being 'China-centric', Trump administration also halted its funding to the UN body. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had earlier claimed that his country has enough evidence to prove the COVID-19 contagion emerged from a 'laboratory in Wuhan' and that it is 'not natural'.

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China's new cases

On Saturday, China reported 21 new COVID-19 infections, including 13 asymptomatic ones, taking the number of cases in the country to 82,941, as per their health authorities. Wuhan city, where the outbreak originated, ramped up efforts for the mass testing of its 11 million residents.

China's National Health Commission (NHC) said that of the eight new confirmed COVID-19 cases reported on Friday, six were imported infections. The other two cases are both domestically transmitted and reported in Jilin Province, which recently went into lockdown mode after reporting a cluster of cases, it said. But the numbers of asymptomatic cases continued to increase as 13 more cases were reported on Friday. The NHC said that 561 asymptomatic cases, including 30 from overseas, were still under medical observation. 

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By Friday, the death toll from the virus in the province stood at 4,512, including 3,869 in Wuhan. Hubei had so far reported 68,134 confirmed COVID-19 cases in total, including 50,339 in Wuhan. As of Friday, the overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 82,941, including 89 patients who were still being treated, and 78,219 people who had been discharged after recovery, the NHC said. Altogether, 4,633 people have died of the disease, it said.

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