South Korea reported 142 new cases, up 70% in one day, to 346; The country also reported its second death.

China reported 397 new cases, bringing the total cases to 76,288, and an additional 109 new deaths or 2,345 in total.

Italy reports 1st virus death, 15 additional cases, 10 cities on lockdown

34 cases in USA.

China pledges to build 19 new hospitals in Wuhan

Hawaii hasn’t tested any suspected cases in the state

253 more passengers depart the diamond princess as 11 of 13 American evacuees in Nebraska test positive

Local authorities in China warn people will be punished for not returning to work if orderedWHO’s Tedros: Window for confronting virus rapidly closing

CDC says virus tremendous health threat, warns more human to human transmission of the virus in the US likely

First case declared in Lebanon

Iran confirms 9 more cases as virus reaches Tehran

South Korea reported massive jump in cases on Friday as total climbed to 204

Global Times insinuates that US might be covering up coronavirus cases

Health officials in Hubei ‘apologize’ for changing case confirmation ‘criteria’

Earlier today, when describing the ludicrous lengths to which China has gone to mask the severity of the Coronavirus pandemic, after five definition changes of what a Coronavirus infection means, and which saw another major jump in the last two days’ cases after Hubei admitted it hadn’t tracked the recently unveiled prison cases, we said that there was a certain irony to China’s data massaging, namely that the more China manipulates the data, the less anyone will believe a positive outcome for the epidemic as a result of lower cases and will instead claim that this is just the result of Chinese propaganda: “It points to a rather concerning confusion over how best to officially report the number of cases, leading to a loss of confidence in the true numbers,” Oanda analyst Jeffrey Halley told Bloomberg. “That could mean that internationally, the rest of the world keeps China in lockdown for longer, which will not be good for the ‘V-shaped recovery’ projections.”

We then said that as China scrambles to goal seek its propaganda number, the world’s attention has shifted to what has emerged as the second coronavirus hotspot, South Korea, where the number of cases is certainly not doctored, pardon the bad pun, and where there is a truly exponential increase in new cases, which are now doubling with every passing day in a terrible, if accurate, representation of what indeed happens when there is a viral epidemic.

Late on Friday we got painfully clear example of just this when China reported that on Feb 21, there were just 397 new Coronavirus cases bringing the total to 76,288, a plunge of more than 50% from the previous day’s adjusted increase of 889 and a number which is now completely meaningless in light of what has become a daily adjustment by China. Meanwhile, the number of deaths, which China has so far failed to revise (but will surely try before this is all over), rose by 109 to 2345, and with the number of cases barely rising, it also means that the mortality rate his now hit a new lifetime high of 3.0%. Which also means that China has to pick: keep fabricating the number of cases while the real deaths keep rising and the mortality rate creep ever higher, or change the definition of death. – READ MORE

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