Coronavirus: Surging US about to overtake China cases

New coronavirus cases are being discovered in the US at a faster rate than anywhere in the world, according to alarming new data.

Firefighters disinfect a platform of Wuhan Railway Station in central China's Hubei province. Picture: AP

The US is set to overtake China as the country with the most confirmed cases of COVID-19 by the weekend.

New cases are being discovered in the world’s third-most populous country at a faster rate than anywhere in the world, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Almost 10,000 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in the US on Tuesday and the country’s total caseload is now more than 55,000. The total number of cases in the world’s biggest economy is doubling every two to three days.

The superpower’s economic and health crisis is being keenly watched by President Xi Jinping’s administration in Beijing, which is refining a propaganda strategy to mark the occasion.

“It is only a matter of time ­before it becomes the hardest hit country in the world. The US ­administration’s attempts to pin the blame on China are not going to alter that, nor let it shrug off its responsibility for the mess,” the China Daily said in an editorial overseen by the Communist Party’s propaganda department.

America’s emergence at the top of the world coronavirus tally board just over two months after the central Chinese city of Wuhan was locked down will underline an extraordinary role reversal for the two superpowers, who are ­engaged in an increasingly ­aggressive systemic battle for global influence.

Mr Xi, who is also the general-secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, has repeatedly called the crisis a test of China’s governance system, while one of his foreign affairs spokesmen, Zhao Lijian, has spread a conspiracy ­theory that the US military introduced the virus to Wuhan.

US President ­Donald Trump last week said the world was “paying a very big price” for the cover-up of early cases of the “Chinese virus”.

And in a recalibration this week, he indicated the patchwork of measures various states in America have just implemented, and which are still to take effect, should be unwound in weeks.

Last week, party mouthpiece The People’s Daily published a celebratory graphic as confirmed cases in the rest of the world overtook those found in China.

That was widely condemned internationally and — until state censors caught up with them — by many social media users in China.

“I cannot think of a more dangerous time in the US-China relationship in the last 40 years,” said Bill Bishop, a longtime ­observer of the bilateral relationship and editor of the Sinocism newsletter.

China’s propaganda machine has in more recent days increased the number of stories about the medical staff and supplies the country is providing to COVID-19 hot spots around the world.

Unlike other World Health ­Organisation members, China continues to shun the WHO’s practice of including all people who test positive for COVID-19 as confirmed cases, even those without physical symptoms.

China has declared more than 81,600 confirmed cases of the corona­virus, although a report citing classified Chinese government data said more than 40,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 had been left off the country’s official tally. That would bring China’s total number of cases to more than 120,000 — a number the US is on track to pass by Sunday.

Since last week, official figures released by the Chinese government — which has greatly reduced the spread of the COVID-19 throughout the country — have reported multiple days with no new cases in Wuhan.

However, independent Chinese news outlet Caixin this week reported that these figures have not included dozens of patients who have tested positive to infection but have no physical symptoms.

Experts are increasingly concerned about the ability of these ­“silent carriers” to spread the virus.

“It’s not possible at the moment to tell if transmission has stopped,” a member of Wuhan’s infectious disease prevention and control team told Caixin.

In a sign of the Chinese government’s ongoing caution about a second outbreak, traffic in and out of Hubei’s capital, Wuhan, will continue to be blocked until April 8, a fortnight after a ban on the rest of the province was ­relaxed.