Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged late last year, has revised sharply upwards its death toll from the disease, admitting cases were "mistakenly reported" or missed entirely.
The adjustment, detailed in a social media posting by the city government on Friday, increased the death toll by 1,290 - about 50 percent - bringing the total to 3,869.
The authorities said there had been late reports from medical institutions, while some patients had died at home as hospitals struggled to cope in the early stages of the outbreak.
The revision came as a number of world leaders suggested China had not been entirely open about the full domestic impact of a virus that has now killed more than 140,000 people around the world, and confined half of humanity to their homes. The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Wuhan was also revised upwards - by 325 to 50,333, the government said. The revisions are likely to play into the Trump administration's growing narrative of Chinese untrustworthiness, which now appears to have some support from Britain and France. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, currently standing in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson who is still recovering from the virus, said there would be "hard questions" for Beijing. In an interview with the Financial Times, French President Emmanuel Macron said it would be "naive" to think China had handled the pandemic well, adding: "There are clearly things that have happened that we don't know about." Beijing and Moscow have rejected the accusations, with Russian President Vladimir Putin denouncing "attempts by some people to smear China". Aljazeera