The new figures for Wuhan include unreported deaths from the early days of the pandemic

China denied covering up the true extent of its coronavirus outbreak yesterday after it revised the death toll sharply upwards amid mounting international calls for an investigation into its culpability for a global health crisis.

Officials in Wuhan, the ground zero of the coronavirus pandemic, admitted there had been mistakes in the original counting of fatalities and revised the death toll to 3,869, an increase of 50 per cent. The number of infections was also raised by 325 to 50,333.

The health officials blamed the increase on the failure to record those who died at home when hospitals were overwhelmed, as well as the failure of some of those hospitals to file complete numbers.

China’s foreign ministry acknowledged the miscounting as a matter of regret