China The doctor claimed that Wei Junlan died of corona virus, but her death was not included in the statistics of the Covid-19 epidemic of Hubei province.

Wei Junlan, a 63-year-old retired factory worker in Wuhan, was in good health, but died on January 21, just about two weeks after he started coughing and having a fever.

His nephew Jerry Shang said that Ms. Wei had not been tested for nCoV infection yet, but the doctor at Wuhan Hospital said her symptoms, including lung infections, fever and worsening, were very similar. infected person.

Ms. Wei has never been to Hoa Nam Seafood Market, where the onset of corona pneumonia (Covid-19), but she lived three km away. Ms. Shang suspected Ms. Wei had contracted the disease from people in the neighborhood.

But her case is not included in the official statistics of the deaths of Covid-19 that Hubei Province publishes daily, the death certificate only stating the cause of her death was severe pneumonia. Some patients like Wei also died without confirmation of what claimed their lives.

Local doctors know many such cases, many Wuhan people complain that their relatives are not tested for nCoV because the front-line hospitals are overloaded due to the high number of patients and the serious shortage of equipment. test.

Wei Peng, a doctor at a hospital in Wuhan, said medical personnel were not allowed to label Covid-19 as a cause of death of a patient without confirmation by the test results. "The mortality rates we are counting at this time are confirmed cases; there are cases with milder symptoms not included in the data," said Jiao Yahui, official of the China National Health Commission. Quoc said at a press conference last week.

This issue changed on February 13, when Hubei Province announced it was using a new statistical method to include clinically diagnosed viral infections, meaning that patients were diagnosed. based on symptoms consistent with Covid-19 but not necessarily in laboratory test results.

After applying this method, the number of deaths due to Codvid-19 in Hubei increased by 242 cases, more than doubled yesterday, to 1,310. The number of infections in the province increased by 14,840, nearly 10 times the previous day, to 48,206.

However, this change may not reflect the actual death toll. Dr. Wei said that a woman could not take her father to the hospital in a timely manner because she could not afford him to get in the car, while the ambulance team was always overloaded and could not go to the house to take him to the hospital. Such patients die at home, they do not count against the nCoV deaths, Wei said.

Because official channels are overloaded, volunteers across the country have been helping to verify and update health information online, as well as helping those who need help. Volunteer Li Nian in Beijing said cases like Ms. Wei were very common and often the whole family could get sick.

Li said a woman she helped was confused after her husband died at home. The funeral home took the car to carry the body, but she did not know what to do with his sheets and clothes, while rushing to find a hospital for her mother-in-law.

Another Wuhan resident, Xia Chengfang, could not say goodbye to his grandfather, who died on January 28. "The hospital directly called the funeral home to cremate the body, we could not see him one last time. My mother and uncle came to get his clothes at the hospital and brought them to a deserted place to burn," she said.

Funeral parlors in the city operate non-stop during the outbreak. A staff surnamed Huang from the funeral home Wuchang told Tencent News that staff were working shifts around the clock and had little time to rest.

Families are banned from holding funerals to prevent the spread of the virus. Instead, hospitals, or families with someone who died at home, must contact funeral homes for them to handle the whole problem. When a dead person is suspected of being infected with nCoV, the family is required to clean the house before the body can be taken away.

"We wear protective clothing, gloves, masks and glasses," Huang said. "When we returned to the funeral home, we sprayed all of our body and dried our clothes."

After Ms. Wei passed away, Jerry Shang said her family was not allowed to look at her one last time and hold a funeral. Instead, the hospital collects the bodies of the patients and lets the local funeral home cremate them together.

Shang is the only member of Ms. Wei's family to remain in Wuhan. He advised her son Wei to stay with his father in Shenzhen before Wuhan was blocked. The funeral home is holding Ms. Wei's ashes. "The hospital said my cousin could come and collect my mother's ashes after the outbreak," Shang said.