Date: January 27th, 2020 12:35 PM
Author: Ocher Half-breed Jewess
As the number of patients stricken by China’s coronavirus continues to mount, at least one analyst believes the country’s reported casualties might be far higher than Beijing has publicly admitted.
Raymond James health care policy analyst Chris Meekins said he suspects official Chinese statistics on coronavirus infections is “really a fraction” of those who actually have contracted the disease — in part because of the country’s established history of underreporting its public health crises.
As global health officials grapple with arresting the virus’ spread, Meekins told “The Ticker” on Friday that “Based on conversations I’ve had with individuals both in the U.S. government and more importantly [in China] is that the number that have been reported out of China on this disease are really a fraction of the number of people who have probably had the disease.”
Over the weekend, China said that thousands of new cases had surfaced, and put the official death count at 80, as a fifth U.S. patient was identified by the Centers for Disease Control on Sunday. The news rocked Wall Street on Monday, where major benchmarks plunged at the opening bell, as traders grappled with fears of a global pandemic.
“If China’s been reporting about 800 [infections] with 25 deaths, we think the number is probably 10 times that number in China right now because you had a number of misdiagnoses,” Meekins said.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-coronavirus-victims-likely-10-times-higher-than-reported-analyst-says-155836267.html
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4431034&forum_id=2#39496059)