Chinese officials are underreporting the number of coronavirus patients in the country, President Trump said.
“You don’t know what the numbers are in China,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “China tells you numbers and … you just don’t know, you know, what are the numbers?”
He cast doubt on the Chinese government’s data less than three hours before a scheduled conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump made the dismissive comment in response to reports that the United States now has more confirmed coronavirus cases than China, where the virus first emerged late last year.
“It’s a tribute to our testing,” Trump said. “We’re testing tremendous numbers of people.”
The number of coronavirus cases that have been confirmed in the U.S. reportedly surpassed China by climbing to 81,321 on Thursday, according to the New York Times.
“I’m sure you’re not able to tell what China is testing or not testing,” Trump said. “I think that’s a little hard.”
China only reported an additional 113 new coronavirus patients over the previous 24 hours, but Beijing’s figures have drawn skepticism in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Chinese officials changed its record-keeping methods in February so that people who test positive for coronavirus but do not display any symptoms would not be classified as confirmed cases.
“More than 43,000 people in China had tested positive for Covid-19 by the end of February but had no immediate symptoms,” the South China Morning Post reported. “They were placed in quarantine and monitored but were not included in the official tally of confirmed cases, which stood at about 80,000 at the time.”
Such a shift in calculations might explain why the number of cases in China has only risen by about 1,100 since February.
