Coronavirus infection rates in the Chinese city of Wuhan, epicenter of the viral outbreak that has since swept the world, may have been 10 times higher than official figures suggest, a study released Wednesday by local health authorities claims.
The desire by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to control the narrative about the virus, its origins, its spread and its infection rates all contributed to the suppression of the facts.
AFP reports about 4.4 percent of the city’s 11 million residents had developed antibodies against the pathogen causing Covid-19 by April, the report by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control (CDC) said.
That correlates to around 480,000 infections in Wuhan by April, nearly 10-times the official tally to date of 50,000 cases in the central China city.
The study tested for antibodies in blood serum samples from around 34,000 people in Wuhan and other Hubei province cities, as well as the cities of Beijing and Shanghai and the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Liaoning.
The revelation comes a week after Wuhan authorities claimed total victory over the virus and boasted of a return to normal life.
According to the CDC’s statement, the researchers found an antibody rate of 4.43 percent among the population of Wuhan. The suggested infection of more than 487,000 people vastly outstrips the 50,354 officially reported cases.
The CDC said antibody rates were far lower outside of Wuhan, only 0.44 percent in other Hubei cities, and only two individuals identified as carrying antibodies among the more than 12,000 tested outside Hubei.
“The survey results show that the population of our country is generally at a low level of infection, indicating that the epidemic control, with Wuhan as the main battlefield, has been successful and effectively prevented the large-scale spread of the epidemic,” it said.
The World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) is sending a fact finding mission to Wuhan in the new year, a full six months after it trumpeted a “full, thorough and transparent probe” into the origins of the coronavirus, as Breitbart News reported.
Australia made the first call for such an inquiry back in April.
Critics have since questioned the delay and sought a timeline of the W.H.O. panel’s visit, expressing concerns the inquiry is “too little, too late, and concessions to Beijing are undermining it.”