Jeh Johnson: 'I simply don't believe China's coronavirus case number'
Discussing the origins of COVID-19, Jeh Johnson, former Homeland Security Secretary, explains why he does not believe China's has been topped out at 83, 000 cases
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Obama-era Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Monday that considering China being “four times” the size of the United States, there is no way that their coronavirus cases peaked at 83,000.
“I simply don’t believe that number,” Johnson told “Fox & Friends.”
Johnson said that after looking at China’s coronavirus case numbers for weeks, it’s hard to believe that their population of 1.4 billion people ranged from 81,000 to 83,000 cases.
Johnson's comments came after China raised Wuhan’s coronavirus death toll by nearly 50 percent Friday following weeks of allegations that officials were underreporting the numbers to make the situation there look better than it actually was.
The city where the coronavirus outbreak is believed to have originated is now reporting 3,869 deaths after adding 1,290 to its previously announced figure. Numbers of total cases in the city of 11 million were also raised by 325 to 50,333, accounting for about two-thirds of China’s total 82,367 announced cases.
Chinese state media claimed Friday that the reason for the sudden leap was that medical facilities were overwhelmed during the peak of the outbreak and because of that, “belated, missed and mistaken reporting occurred.”
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The new figures were compiled through a comparison of data from Wuhan’s epidemic prevention and control big data system, the city funeral service system, the municipal hospital authority’s information system, and the nucleic acid test system to “remove double-counted cases and fill in missed cases,” said a mystery official.
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Johnson said that Trump and the National Security Council will have to take into account the national security and economic considerations to “ultimately deal with China and our relationship with China.”
“It’s up to these people in the situation room to figure that question out.”
Fox News' Greg Norman contributed to this report.
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