The People’s Republic of China has been accused by the United States Intelligence of under-reporting both coronavirus infection figures and death statistics. The United States has made the discovery at a time where infections have surpassed that of China.
United States Covid-19 infections currently stand at 237,812 and deaths are at 5,713 compared to 81,589 infections and 3,318.
According to three U.S officials who spoke to Bloomberg, China concealed the numbers they recorded for political reasons.
The officials who declined to be named since the report is secret said China’s reporting was intentionally incomplete. Two of the three officials both confirmed China’s number were are far from what is happening on the ground.
The Chinese Embassy did not immedieatly respond to the questions sent to them.
Vice President Mike Pence also accused China of being not forthcoming. He believes China misled them and gave them the wrong information that has made it difficult for them to contain the disease. He also thinks the disease became real a month before China reported it.
Pence spoke to CNN, “The reality is that we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming. What appears evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China.”
China also had its own way of coming up with statistics. They excluded people who do no show symptoms from the official statistics.
Thousands of burning urns were seen at funeral homes in China raising skepitcism on the number of actual dead bodies being disposed off.