People wearing protective face masks leave work after office hours as the spread of coronavirus continues in Beijing, China, April 17, 2020. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

The Chinese Communist Party has revised its reported death count in Wuhan by exactly 50 percent, an attempt to improve the “credibility of the government” as residents and experts have warned the actual count is far higher that what’s been previously reported.

In an interview Friday with the Xinhua state news agency, officials pointed to unreported deaths at homes as the reason for the revision, to show “accountability to history, to the people and the victims,” and to promote “open and transparent disclosure of information and data accuracy.” Deaths rose 1,290 to 3,869 in the revised number.


But Wuhan residents have warned that the death count is at least 40,000, pointing to increased demands on funeral homes and cremation numbers, which the government has censored reporting on. U.S. intelligence has also told the White House that mid-level bureaucrats in Wuhan have been lying about the number of cases, with some experts estimating that the total caseload in China could be close to three million, way above the official count of over 82,000 officially confirmed cases.

“The provinces report nonsense, such as Jiangsu with zero deaths in a population of 80 million,” Derek Scissors of the American Enterprise Institute told National Review. “The lessons China learned are all wasted, even harmful if decision-makers elsewhere believe China is offering accurate information and represents a model.”

Wuhan lifted its total lockdown earlier this month, but city doctors have warned that tens of thousands of asymptomatic cases could exist, in comments that were subsequently removed from publication by the government.

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