... Dr. Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization's emergencies chief, said the dramatic increase was due to a revised way of counting cases and cautioned it did not represent a sudden surge in new infections.
This increase you've all seen in the last 24 hours is largely down to how cases are being diagnosed and reported, he said, noting that the jump in infections refers to patients that go back days and weeks, including to the beginning of the outbreak.
China's National Health Commission said officials in Hubei province, whose stricken capital of Wuhan is the virus epicenter, began tallying cases using a lower bar of clinical diagnosis. That appears to count cases based on doctors analyses and lung imaging rather than relying solely on laboratory test results. More than 13,000 of the newly-reported infections were a result of the new way of counting.
A spokesman for China's health commission, Mi Feng, said the change was aimed at identifying suspected cases in which the patient has pneumonia so they can be treated quicker and reduce the likelihood of more serious illness or death. It was also seen as a reflection of a chaotic crush of people seeking treatment and the struggle to keep up with a backlog of untested samples
