COVID-19 cases jumps nearly 10 fold in China's Hubei following new counting method

중국 후베이, 새로운 '코로나19' 진단법 도입후 확진자 급증

Health officials in Hubei province, announced the the number of virus related deaths continues to spike.
New infections at the epicenter of the disease jumped up as well.
Beijing sacked some top officials in the Province for poor handling of the outbreak and even changed how they count confirmed cases.
Lee Kyung-eun has the full story.
According to China's National Health Commision on Thursday, Hubei Province has reported nearly 15-thousand new cases and an additional 2-hundred-42 deaths.
The number of new cases was 9 times the number reported the day before, reversing the recent declines.
This was also the highest death toll in a single day and more than double the previous high.
The officials explained on Thursday that the spike was because the province adopted a new counting method.
Before, people were classified into three groups: suspected patients, clinically diagnosed patients and lab-confirmed patients.
Now they've decided to count people "clinically diagnosed" as "confirmed" along with those diagnosed through lab testing.
This means anyone with symptoms like severe respiratory tract disease and lesions in the lungs will be considered an infected patient.
The rest of China apart from Hubei Province had already been applying these guidelines, sparking concerns that the province has been under-reporting the figures.
With this, the total number of infections in China comes to more than 50-thousand while the death toll has risen to more than 13-hundred.
As the numbers continue to rise, top leaders in the province have been sacked.
China's state-run Xinhwa News News Agency reported on Thursday that the head of Communist Party in Hubei Province, Jiang Chaoliang, has been relieved of his post,... and Wuhan’s party chief, Ma Guoqiang, has also been fired.
This follows the replacement of two other senior officials in Hubei earlier this week -- the Communist party chief of Hubei’s health commission and its director.
And earlier this month, more than 3-hundred other officials in Hubei were penalized for poor handling of the outbreak.
The Chinese government engaged in a similar campaign back in 2003 when it fired high-ranking officials for the SARS outbreak.
Lee Kyung-eun, Arirang News.

#Wuhan #coronavirus #Hubei

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