The death toll from the coronavirus in mainland China spiked 23 percent Wednesday amid new counting methods adopted by Chinese health officials, who eased their criteria for confirmed cases.
Deaths rose by 252, to a total of 1,367 worldwide. All but two of those deaths have been recorded in China. Meanwhile, the total number of confirmed cases spiked to 60,286 – an increase of over 15,000 from the previous day.
Only 14 cases have been confirmed in the U.S. thus far.
The spikes overseas are at least partly due to new counting standards implemented by China, which reported Wednesday that it is tallying infections differently. The nation previously only counted a coronavirus case as confirmed when a person tested positively for the virus, but that thinking has been revised, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said Wednesday night.
The government is no longer requiring a positive test, the news agency said, a decision made partly because testing kits are in short supply. New cases are now being confirmed if a person is simply diagnosed by a doctor or other health professional; China says the new standard will help treat people more quickly once they exhibit symptoms of the virus.
The new numbers of deaths push the coronavirus well past that of the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, officials said. But the mortality rate – a statistic that measures the deadliness of the virus on infected persons – of SARS is still significantly higher than coronavirus. The latest figures show that coronavirus has a mortality rate of 2.3 percent, compared to nearly 9.6 percent for SARS.
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