Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Sa Ye said about 10,000 deaths in Wuhan were not caused by nCoV and the ashes were not yet received because of the blockade.

"The funeral home in Wuhan reopened on March 23. You see people waiting in line to receive ashes because Wuhan has been cordoned off for more than two months," Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Sa Ye responded to the channel. French BFM television on 1/4. "In addition to the more than 2,500 people who died in this city because of Covid-19, about 10,000 people died of other causes. We do not hide the deaths and the figures are accurate."

According to Lu, the blockade order was imposed in Wuhan on January 23, making many people unable to receive ashes of their loved ones, resulting in long queues at the Wuhan funeral home after travel restrictions. lifted last week. He said an estimated 51,200 people died in Wuhan in 2019, or an average of more than 4,000 people per month. The figures for January and February are usually higher than the rest of the year because of the cold weather.

China currently records more than 3,300 deaths from nCoV, of which Wuhan accounts for nearly 2,600. Ambassador Lo Sa Ye said that after about two months of tightly controlling domestic travel, China had control of Covid-19. However, he also warned that imported infections raised concerns about a second outbreak.

Mr. Lu's comments came after Caixin, a Beijing-based financial and business magazine, last week quoted a truck driver as saying he had transported about 5,000 jars of ashes in two days. March 26, he went to a funeral home in Hankou District, one of eight funeral homes in Wuhan. Caixin also posted an image of some 3,500 jars stacked in a funeral home, though it was unclear how many jars contained ashes. The magazine described a line of about 200 meters long waiting outside the funeral home.

In February, Caixin reported that some patients who died did not count as Covid-19 victims because they had no chance to be tested. Their death certificates often state the cause of death is "severe pneumonia" or "severe public-associated pneumonia".

When Covid-19 was first reported at the end of December 2019, only people who tested positive would be considered nCoV infections. China was severely lacking in testing equipment at the time and it was not until mid-February that it relaxed the diagnostic criteria, placing symptomatic individuals on the list of nCoV-infected patients. Health officials also said that many patients were denied admission in the early stages of the epidemic due to the overloaded hospital system in Wuhan.

Bloomberg on Tuesday quoted three unnamed US officials saying US intelligence sent a confidential report to the White House last week, concluding that China intentionally reported cases and deaths from nCoV lower than it actually was. China then criticized "shameless", "unethical" US officials and demanded that the United States abandon the politicization of public health issues.