The command centre for the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei province and the previous epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, released a notification regarding the revision of the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths on Friday.

(Photo/Pixabay.com)

As of the end of April 16, the city’s total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases had been revised up by 325, and the number of deaths among the confirmed COVID-19 cases up by 1,290.

Although this is a normal action, it has drawn a great deal of attention worldwide, prompting some to ask, “Why there are discrepancies between the present data and the previously released data? Does it indicate that Wuhan had been concealing information?”

Such doubts are understandable, but the question is more complicated than it first appears.

Anyone with any common sense should know that after major events such as a natural disaster, sudden accident or public health incident, it is a universal convention for authorities to rectify omissions, investigate doubts, and revise early statistics according to new leads and the emergence of concrete evidence.

Wuhan’s command centre for the prevention and control of the novel COVID-19 has also followed this convention. It has set up a special investigation group for this task, and ordered multiple departments to compare the relevant data online so as to remove duplicates and rectify omissions.

In addition, great efforts have been made to check and verify the relevant information on site from person to person in order to guarantee that the whole city has been covered and no case left out.

Such efforts by Wuhan represent international convention, and they were made with the intention of respecting lives, facts, as well as history.

Such basic logic and common sense is clear to all.

A similar conclusion can also be reached by answering three questions.

First, was there enough incentive for Wuhan to hide the real numbers of confirmed cases and deaths?

Hiding this data means those involved must take the risk of being severely punished and condemned forever when the truth is finally revealed.

What are the benefits of such an act? Would officials in Wuhan get promotions or make fortunes if the numbers were a little bit lower? Or could they dump stocks like certain U.S. senators to reap profits before information about the situation was released?

There was never this kind of “positive incentive” in China. Instead, the world has seen how government officials in Hubei province and its capital Wuhan were held accountable and widely criticized for their inadequate response to the incident in its initial stages.

Second, if they had concealed the real numbers, were those “falsified” figures small enough to get those who tampered with the data off the hook?

As the worst-hit Chinese city in the pandemic, Wuhan examined tens of millions of people and reported tens of thousands of confirmed cases and thousands of deaths. In peacetime, these numbers would be alarming however you looked at it.

In fact, in today’s world where information spreads far and fast around the world in a variety of forms, a public health incident of this magnitude was quickly placed under a high-powered microscope.

If some people in Wuhan could have mitigated their punishment by reducing some numbers regarding the pandemic, why didn’t they just cut it more and make the data more “appropriate” so that they could shift the blame more easily?

Furthermore, the difference between the two sets of data are within a reasonable range. According to the general principles of statistics, this should be attributed to unintentional omissions caused by differences in statistical methods rather than deliberate attempts to conceal.

Third, how did the discrepancies between the two sets of data come about?

The notification has, in fact, answered this question in detail.

During the initial stage of the pandemic, when China, and Wuhan in particular, was suddenly stricken by the strange virus, there was an abysmal lack of nucleic acid testing capacity and extremely limited medical resources to treat severe and critical patients.

At that time, Wuhan and Hubei were facing a huge gap between demand and their capacity for epidemic prevention and control measures.

Under such circumstances, no country can ensure that no cases are missed and every single case is recorded in a timely manner. What has happened, and is happening, around the world shows that this is, in fact, inevitable.

The pandemic that’s currently ravaging the world has shown clearly how cunning a virus can be and how limited man’s knowledge is. As various reports can verify, no country was fully prepared for the sudden pandemic.

It has been proven that the practice of concentrating limited medical resources on the rescue and treatment of severe and critical patients was the most rational choice made during the early period of the pandemic.

In fact, with the implementation of various measures stressing the need for raising hospital admission capacity to leave no one unattended to and large numbers of medical personnel and supplies being sent from various parts of China to Hubei to fight against the virus, the shortage of medical resources in the province was quickly addressed.

During this major test, Chinese people have seen clearly and without doubt that the country always puts its people first and regards their health and safety as its top priority.

China has long treasured the principle of “seeking truth from facts”, and has adhered to this very principle throughout its efforts to combat COVID-19.

Revising the relevant data on the COVID-19 pandemic in the name of respecting life is precisely the result of the country’s practice of seeking truth from facts.