China might have had four times the number of coronavirus infections as the official number the country originally presented, according to a new study.
"We estimated that there were at least 232,000 infections in the first epidemic wave of COVID-19 in mainland China," the study researchers wrote. "The true number of infections could still be higher than that currently estimated considering the possibility of under-detection of some infections, particularly those that were mild and asymptomatic, even under the broadest case definitions."
The study, published Tuesday in the medical journal Lancet, showed China might have 232,000 confirmed cases rather than the 55,000 in the country's official count.
The researchers pulled the numbers from the epidemiological curves published in a report by the World Health Organization in February. The results were gathered following a mission to Wuhan, China.
"We estimated that when the case definitions were changed from version 1 to 2, version 2 to 4, and version 4 to 5, the proportion of infections being identified as COVID-19 cases was increased by 7.1 times from version 1 to 2, 2.8 times from version 2 to 4, and 4.2 times from version 4 to 5," the study authors wrote.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.