Clerical problems and “institutional failures” within China’s health-care system led to the world getting a rosier view than reality of the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a major leak of documents to CNN by a whistleblower. For many reasons—including major testing delays, an influenza outbreak in Hubei province, and a conservative standard for measuring cases—Chinese officials underreported the nation’s COVID-19 cases in February and March, CNN reports. For example, when China said it had 2,478 new confirmed cases nationwide on Feb. 10, Hubei was actually reporting 5,918 new cases, according to the documents. “It was clear they did make mistakes—and not just mistakes that happen when you’re dealing with a novel virus—also bureaucratic and politically-motivated errors in how they handled it,” Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN. “But even if they had been 100% transparent.... it would probably not have stopped this developing into a pandemic.”
