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An outspoken critic of China has sensationally claimed to have been told by a doctor from Wuhan that five million people have died across the country as a result of coronavirus.

Wuhan authorities last week revised their death figures from the epicentre of the outbreak, by an increase of 50% to 3,869, bringing the total dead across China to 4,632.

They admitted people dying at home and cases in hospitals were missed during the early stages but China’s foreign ministry denied that there had been a cover-up of the figures.

Fears have risen recently, though, that Chinese officials have deliberately underreported the extent of the disease in the country.

According to Sky News, the British government has been informed about disinformation that China has "lied about the extent of their own outbreak by a factor of 40".

(Image: Twitter/PigstyPurification)

US intelligence officials also reportedly told the White House that the Chinese government deliberately concealed the total number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the country, Bloomberg revealed earlier this month.

And Chinese outlet Caixin recently reported on thousands of urns being spotted in Wuhan, sparking claims coronavirus death figures in China are in the tens of thousands.

Ruomei Zhou, who rose to fame after posting a video on Twitter calling for Chinese people to apologise to the US, has now claimed she was told that the figure may, in fact, be five million.

This claim has not been verified but it is known that doctors in China risk serious censure for speaking out.

Ruomei, 23, runs Twitter channel Pigsty News, which claims to offer the "real China news" from insiders within the secretive state and often criticises the government.

She told this site she fled to New Zealand after she was arrested by police for using VPN to check foreign sites and, in June 2019, arrived in the US where she now resides.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Star Online, Ruomei said: "At the end of February 5, five million people died and tens of thousands of million people were infected [across China].

"A doctor inside Wuhan told me that they [the Chinese government] cut down the internet, the WiFi. They confiscate the phones of doctors and nurses and threaten to cancel their medical certificate.

"So I haven't got any videos from Wuhan since then."

(Image: REUTERS)

Daily Star Online put this figure to the former president of the Hong Kong Medical Association and outspoken critic of China, Dr Gabriel Choi Kin, who agreed the number of deaths may be far greater than official figures suggest.

He claimed “figures of contracted cases and mortality were trimmed” in the country and said that there had been a widespread attempt to stop whistleblowers.

But, when asked whether the real figure of deaths was 5 million, Dr Kin suggested 160,000 fatalities was the likelier number.

“I would speculate less than that,” he told this site. “8,000 deaths times by 20 may be more likely.”

Roumei, from Jiangsu, east China, has disclosed to Daily Star Online the name of the hospital and area of specialisation the doctor works in but we have chosen to withhold those details to prevent the doctor being identified by the Chinese authorities.

The doctor contacted Ruomei on WeChat, China's equivalent of WhatsApp, but she claims to have since lost contact.

Ever since the deadly virus broke out in Wuhan in December 2019, reports have flooded out of China of authorities "silencing" whistleblowers revealing the true extent of Covid-19.

One man who filmed bodies piling up in a Wuhan hospital was arrested after his video went viral.

Journalist Fang Bin went missing after he was allegedly put in a mandatory quarantine last month.

And Li Wenliang, the brave doctor who issued the first warnings about the coronavirus outbreak on December 30, was arrested for “spreading false rumours”.

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He was then forced to sign a police document admitting that he had “seriously disrupted social order”.

The doctor later contracted Covid-19 and has since died.

The Wuhan medic also reportedly told Ruomei that "the death toll of doctors and nurses and their families were more than 20,000".

"[The high figure is] because every hospital across the nation sent their doctors to Wuhan," she continued. "My mum is a nurse but she didn't get sent to Wuhan, but about two-thirds of the medical force of other hospitals were sent to Wuhan."

(Image: NC)

While China may well have under-reported the number of deaths linked to coronavirus, if Ruomei's source is correct then the real figure would be 1,500 times greater.

Daily Star Online put these allegations to the Chinese consulate in London on Wednesday, April 1 and last week as well as repeatedly calling the embassy.

But at the time of publishing, the consulate has not responded.

Following the revision of the Wuhan figures, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said: “Medical workers at some facilities might have been preoccupied with saving lives and there existed delayed reporting, underreporting or misreporting, but there has never been any cover-up and we do not allow cover-ups.”