Coronavirus: Indian-American politician Nikki Haley casts doubt on accuracy of China's official COVID-19 figures

Indian-American politician Nikki Haley has cast doubt on the correctness of China’s official Covid-19 numbers, dubbing them "clearly not accurate", in the midst of reports that the CIA has suggested the White House not to believe in the figures being presented by Beijing.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday told reporters that he didn’t have confidence in data laid out by China, "Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side," Trump said at a press conference.

"China has reported only 82,000 coronavirus cases & 3,300 deaths in a nation of 1.5 billion people. This is clearly not accurate," Haley, wrote in a tweet on Thursday.

In contrast with China, the total of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 in the US on Thursday surged to 240,000 and the mortality rate increased to 5,800.

"China cares more about its reputation than helping the rest of the world defeat a virus that was started in their country," Nikki Haley stated, in the midst of news reports that the CIA is carrying out an independent analysis of coronavirus figures in China and has offered suggestion to the White house not to be convince by numbers given by Beijing.

"CIA hunts for authentic virus totals in China, dismissing government tallies," said The New York Times headline of a report on this issue.

"Obtaining a more accurate count of the Chinese rate of infection and deaths from the virus has worldwide public health implications at a time of grave uncertainty over the virus, its speed of transmission and other fundamental questions," the report said.

"For American officials, the totals are critical to getting a better understanding of how Covid-19 will affect the United States in the months to come and of the effectiveness of countermeasures like social distancing, according to American intelligence agencies and White House officials," the US daily reported.

As maintained by China’s National Health Commission, a total of 81,589 verified cases of the coronavirus were reported on the mainland, and 3,318 people had lost their lives as of Wednesday.

US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien on Wednesday told reporters that there was no wast to corroborate the Chinese numbers.

"Unfortunately, we are just not in a position to confirm any of the numbers that are coming out of China. There''s no way to confirm any of those numbers," he said.

"There's lots of public reporting on whether the numbers are too low. You've got access to those reports that are coming out of the Chinese social media and some of the few reporters that are left in China. We just have no way to confirm any of those numbers," Mr O'Brien said.

A sum of 10,02,159 SARS-CoV-2 have been recorded across more than 175 nations with 51,485 deaths reported thus far, as maintained by Johns Hopkins University figure.

The United States has reported 2,36,339 coronavirus cases, the highest in the world, and more than 5,000 people have lost their lives.

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