Nearly half a million people in the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic is believed to have been infected could have been infected with the virus, about 10 times the number of confirmed cases.
Conformable a study published late Monday by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which surveyed more than 34,000 people in April, about 4.4% of those tested were found to be carrying antibodies that fight the virus that causes COVID-19.
The presence of antibodies means that people have had the virus at some point in the past, and according to the report, nearly 500,000 people in Wuhan, which has a total population of 11 million, could have been infected.
This is almost 10 times higher than the 50,000 confirmed cases reported by Chinese health authorities in mid-April.
As of Sunday, Wuhan reported a total of 50,354 confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to data Wuhan Municipal Health Commission.
This week’s study indicated that the infection rate in Wuhan was significantly higher than in other Chinese cities. For example, the survey found that only 0.44 percent of Hubei residents surveyed were found to wear antibodies.
Conformable CNNYanzhong Huang, a senior member of global health at the Foreign Relations Council, said the initial underreporting in Wuhan could be partly attributed to the chaos of the first months of the pandemic, as well as the failure to count asymptomatic cases of COVID-19.
Huang stressed that underreporting is not an exclusive problem for Wuhan, as testing capabilities were limited, and hospitals were overwhelmed by a sudden increase in patients because little was known about the virus in the early months.
However, the Chinese government has also faced scrutiny and criticism over the suspected lack of transparency regarding the severity of the virus.
On Monday, a citizen journalist who reported from Wuhan to the beginning of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic he was sentenced to four years in prison after being found guilty of “raising quarrels and causing trouble,” according to several reports.
The accusation is regularly used by the Chinese government against human rights activists and other dissidents.
Zhang Zhan, 37, traveled to Wuhan in February and filmed hospitals, neighborhoods and more as the city was blocked during its initial outbreak of COVID-19. Her report accused the government of not informing citizens about the reality of the pandemic.
Prosecutors accused Zhang of “publishing large amounts of false information” and receiving interviews from the international media to “malign the situation of the Wuhan Covid-19 epidemic.” CNN reported.