New report says China concealed more than 43,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases

A new report alleges China hid more than 43,000 cases of coronavirus by the end of February.

What are the details?

According to the South China Morning Post, at least 43,000 of China's COVID-19 diagnoses were not included in the country's official count of confirmed cases.

The 43,000 figure reportedly represents "silent carriers" — people who have been diagnosed with coronavirus, but who also were asymptomatic.

"More than 43,000 people in China had tested positive for Covid-19 by the end of February but had no immediate symptoms, a condition typically known as asymptomatic, according to the data," the outlet reported. "They were placed in quarantine and monitored but were not included in the official tally of confirmed cases, which stood at about 80,000 at the time."

As pointed out by the Daily Caller, "China's failure to report asymptomatic coronavirus cases in its official tally goes against the World Health Organization's guidance that anyone who tests positive for the virus should be counted as a confirmed case, regardless of their symptoms."

At the time of this writing, there are 362,019 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across the globe. At least 15,495 of them have died so far.

Additionally, the South China Morning Post also reported that at least a third of coronavirus cases could be "silent carriers."

Hiroshi Nishiura, an epidemiologist at Hokkaido University in Japan, said, "The number of novel coronavirus (Covid-19) cases worldwide continues to grow, and the gap between reports from China and statistical estimates of incidence based on cases diagnosed outside China indicates that a substantial number of cases are underdiagnosed."

You can read more on the study here.