Wuhan's figure likely 10 times its official tally

Passengers wearing face masks walk to their train at Wuhan railway station on November 25. Pic/AFP

A study by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that the number of novel Coronavirus infections in Wuhan, the epicentre of the pandemic, could have been 10 times higher than the official tally, reported CNN.

The study is based on tests of blood serum samples of hundreds of Wuhan residents and has found an antibody prevalence rate of 4.43 per cent for COVID-19, CNN reported. It was conducted to understand the scale of infections in the city of 11 million people, which had 50,339 cases as of Sunday.

The research highlight the problem of underreporting during the peak of the outbreak, CNN quoted Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, as saying. Huang cited the chaos and not recording the asymptomatic cases among reasons for underreporting.

According to CNN, several people came to Wuhan hospitals with fever, but due to lack of resources and test kits many of them were asked to home quarantine. This led to spread in infections and deaths at home that were never recorded as officials COVID-19 toll.

Meanwhile, Wuhan has started the emergency COVID-19 vaccination on some key groups, a senior health official said on Tuesday, even as China is yet to officially certify its multiple vaccines.