Leaked documents now expose China's lies about the gravity of COVID-19 outbreak

In a report marked "internal document, please keep confidential," local health authorities in the province of Hubei, where the virus was first detected, list a total of 5,918 newly detected cases on February 10, more than double the official public number of confirmed cases, breaking down the total into a variety of subcategories, reports CNN.

China is believed to have never revealed the original figures initially.

The previously undisclosed figure is among a string of revelations contained within 117 pages of leaked documents from the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, shared with and verified by CNN.

Taken together, the documents amount to the most significant leak from inside China since the beginning of the pandemic and provide the first clear window into what local authorities knew internally and when, reports the American news channel.

China has repeatedly rejected claims that  it deliberately concealed information relating to the virus.

The documents, which cover an incomplete period between October 2019 and April this year, reveal what appears to be an inflexible health care system constrained by top-down bureaucracy and rigid procedures that were ill-equipped to deal with the emerging crisis.

At several critical moments in the early phase of the pandemic, the documents show evidence of clear missteps and point to a pattern of institutional failings, reports CNN.

One of the more striking data points concerns the slowness with which local Covid-19 patients were diagnosed.

Even as authorities in Hubei presented their handling of the initial outbreak to the public as efficient and transparent, the documents show that local health officials were reliant on flawed testing and reporting mechanisms, the news channel reported.

A report in the documents from early March says the average time between the onset of symptoms to confirmed diagnosis was 23.3 days, which experts have told CNN would have significantly hampered steps to both monitor and combat the disease.

According to reports, China's Hubei was dealing with a significant influenza outbreak at the same time when the COVID-19 virus outbreak first emerged.

It caused cases to rise to 20 times the level recorded the previous year, the documents show, placing enormous levels of additional stress on an already stretched health care system, reports CNN.

The influenza "epidemic," as officials noted in the document, was not only present in Wuhan in December, but was greatest in the neighboring cities of Yichang and Xianning. It remains unclear what impact or connection the influenza spike had on the Covid-19 outbreak, the news channel reported.