This is a problem because it suggests that despite the now chronic data obfuscation, China may be about to unleash to a second wave of coronavirus infections - both domestically and internationally - something JPMorgan predicted is virtually inevitable.
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It's an even bigger problem because at midnight on Wednesday, China ended its lockdown of Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus first emerged and remains the symbol of a pandemic that has killed tens of thousands of people, shaken the global economy and thrown daily life into upheaval across the planet.
Alas, as the NYT reports, the city that has reopened after more than 10 weeks is a profoundly damaged one, a place whose recovery will be watched worldwide for lessons on how populations move past pain and calamity of such staggering magnitude. What's worse, is that judging by the latest reports, a new cluster of cases may be emerging and since Wuhan was ground zero, the risk is that by reopening Wuhan, China may be about to restart a whole new global wave of infections..."
"...Meanwhile, speculation is rife that the real infection numbers for Wuhan could be more than double that, according to two recent studies that estimated that the cumulative total for the city was already higher than 125,000 in February according to the WSJ. One study, by University of Hong Kong researchers, noted that China changed its criteria for diagnosis six times, including on Feb. 4, when it widened the testing pool considerably, leading to a surge in confirmed cases. If testing capabilities were available throughout the outbreak, and the Feb. 4 criteria had been applied throughout China’s crisis, 232,000 cases could have been detected in China by Feb. 20, with 127,000 cases in Wuhan alone, the researchers estimated. Additionally, as the WSJ also notes, experts and residents believe the official death toll excludes those who died at home or couldn’t be tested early on..."
"... Until April 1, China didn’t publish figures for asymptomatic cases, which it defines as people who don’t yet show symptoms but have tested positive and could be infectious. Since then, Wuhan authorities have reported 194 new asymptomatic cases. They also said a total of 658 asymptomatic cases were under medical observation as of Monday. Health Times, a publication affiliated with the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper, quoted a senior doctor in Wuhan saying there could be 10,000 to 20,000 asymptomatic cases there, according to a survey done in the previous three days. The online articles was promptly deleted after it was published.
Most skeptical that the Wuhan crisis has been solved are the city's own residents, who say they are skeptical in part because local authorities tried to cover up the scale of the problem early on. Police reprimanded several people who tried to issue warnings via social media and officials warned doctors not to speak publicly about the disease. Restrictions on people retrieving deceased relatives’ ashes from funeral homes ahead of last Saturday’s Tomb Sweeping festival, a day when many Chinese visit ancestors’ graves, also aroused suspicions. Officials banned people from observing Tomb Sweeping rituals until April 30, saying it was to avoid cemetery overcrowding..."
"...Such doubts, combined with the reports of new asymptomatic cases, are triggering fears of a potential second wave of infections that could undermine Beijing’s claim to have tamed the virus.
Yet despite the all too real possibility that Wuhan is a ticking timebomb, ready to unleash a second wave of coronavirus infections on the world - and this time with mutations, making any potential immunity from the first wave null and void - China is scrambling to show to the world just how successful it has been in fixing its own crisis, and Chinese authorities lifted the mass quarantine of Hubei province except for Wuhan, its capital, on March 25..."
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