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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 New cases drop as China revises method again, while global infections top 75,000
A community worker measures the temperature of a man as police officers inspect his documents at a checkpoint set up at an intersection in Wuhan, China, yesterday. Photo: Reuters
/ Bloomberg
Hubei Province, at the center of the COVID-19 outbreak, yesterday reported 349 new cases, a sharp decline from nearly 1,700 the previous day as China again changed its method for counting infections.
China’s National Health Commission on Wednesday said that it would now only classify patients as suspected cases and confirmed cases, eliminating the category for clinically diagnosed cases by computed tomography scans.
China has faced increasing criticism as it repeatedly adjusts how it reports COVID-19 data. Last week, US officials questioned the government’s transparency after a change in the method for counting infections caused a surge of almost 15,000 new cases in Hubei.
While the overall spread of the virus has been slowing, the situation remains severe in Hubei Province and its capital, Wuhan. More than 80 percent of the country’s cases are in Hubei and 95 percent of the deaths, National Health Commission data showed.
The death tally in China hit 2,118 as 114 more people died, but health officials reported the lowest number of new cases there in nearly a month, including in Hubei.
A total of 74,576 people have been infected by COVID-19 in China and hundreds more in more than 25 countries.
The number of deaths outside China has climbed to 11.
Japan’s toll rose to three as a man and a woman in their 80s who had been aboard a quarantined cruise ship died, while fears there mounted about other passengers who disembarked the Diamond Princess after testing negative.
South Korea reported its first death and the number of infections nearly doubled to 104 — almost half of them from a cluster centered on a religious sect.
Iran on Wednesday reported two deaths, the first fatalities in the Middle East. Deaths have previously been confirmed in Taiwan, France, the Philippines and Hong Kong.
Chinese officials have said that their drastic containment efforts have started to pay off.
“Results show that our control efforts are working,” Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi （王毅） said at a special meeting on the virus with Southeast Asian counterparts in Laos, citing the latest data.
China is making “tremendous progress” and “trends are very encouraging, but we are not at a turning point yet,” WHO Regional Emergency Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Richard Brennan said in Cairo.
Additional reporting by AFP
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
