UK removes China's 'unreliable' coronavirus data from its daily briefings

Amid increasing speculations over China’s coronavirus death toll, Britain has removed the communist superpower from the list of countries to compare the spread of COVID-19 disease. British media reported that till April 23 China was included in the charts showcased at the daily coronavirus briefings at Downing Street. In a bid to compare UK’s response with other countries during the times of pandemic, the British lawmakers had statistics of all affected countries and territories. However, after several reports suggesting that China’s death toll is inaccurate and last week the mainland updated the number of died of coronavirus, the British government removed the mainland.

While as of April 26, UK has recorded 148,377 cases of coronavirus with at least 20,319 fatalities, media reports cited a study by Hong Kong University that stated more than 232,000 people might have contracted the COVID-19 disease in China, which nearly four times the actual figure reported by the government in the mainland. As of April 26, China has reported 82,827 with 4,632 casualties since the virus originated in the country back in December 2019. According to reports, UK officials believe that if China’s ‘unreliable’ figures are incorporated in their comparison, it might result in derailing UK’s response to the health crisis.  

The founder of the group and chairman of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, Tom Tugendhat has said, “This data is used to judge the effectiveness of our own response, whether good or bad. It’s important we are comparing like with like, otherwise our responses could be distorted leading to more deaths in the UK.”

“Clearly No 10 believes the same as the rest of the world, that China’s data is unreliable and possibly false,” he was quoted saying.

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Coronavirus 'is not going to disappear'

Meanwhile, UK’s chief medical officer had not only declared that COVID-19 disease “is not going to disappear” in the near future but also cautioned that people will have to follow social distancing measures "for the rest of the year". Professor Chris Whitty has said that it would be “wholly unrealistic” to expect the life would return to normalcy after the UK successfully contains the outbreak. While leaders across the globe are struggling to strike a balance between flattening the curve of coronavirus spread and the declining economy, Whitty reportedly believes that the only “ideal way” to continue life, in the long run, is to develop a “highly effective vaccine” or drugs that can treat the highly contagious disease. 

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(With ANI inputs)