London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Aug 22, 2025

Coronavirus Case Numbers Jumped Overnight. It’s Because We Changed How We Count Them.

Some 15,000 coronavirus case numbers were added on Wednesday night, the biggest jump seen so far in the outbreak, driven by doctors in the hardest-hit Chinese province changing how they diagnose cases.

A cruise ship filled with ever more sick passengers. A second death outside China. An overnight jump of over 15,000 additional people diagnosed with a new, dangerous, coronavirus.

It’s all bad news, and a tragedy for the 1,370 people who have died in the outbreak, still just over a month old. But the skyrocketing case count, driven primarily by last night’s jump, doesn’t point to a worldwide explosion of the disease now called COVID-19, public health experts say. Instead, it's due to a change in how the case numbers are being counted.

“We’re not dealing with a spike of 14,000 cases in one day,” said the World Health Organization’s Mike Ryan, executive director of the Health Emergencies Programme, speaking at a Thursday news conference. WHO officials had warned the jump was coming for the last few days, anticipating a change in diagnosis criteria.

Until now, cases had only been confirmed by lab tests finding the virus in swab samples from patients. But in Hubei province, patients with lung scans showing the signature pneumonia seen in COVID-19 cases over the last several weeks were just added to the case totals, causing the overnight jump. (Everywhere else in the world, confirmation still requires a lab test result.)

That caused a 34% overnight jump in the most recent case counts. A total of 60,360 people were diagnosed with COVID-19 as of Thursday, with 99% of them clustered in China’s central Hubei province, the origin of the outbreak.

The illness is marked by fever, coughing, and pneumonia, and on Tuesday, WHO finally gave it an official name: COVID-19. The same day, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses suggested the coronavirus that causes it, which until now has only been identified by its family name, be officially referred to as “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).” WHO has pushed back against using this name for the virus however, according to Science.


The increase in cases, Ryan said, “does not appear to be a sign of a change in the trajectory of the disease.” He cited the continued slow growth in cases seen outside Hubei province, with only 8 of some 537 cases outside mainland China not tied to travel to Wuhan or a traveler from there, possible evidence against a pandemic spread of COVID-19. The biggest cluster of outside cases so far has been among people quarantined aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship anchored off Japan, with 218 cases on the ship as of Wednesday. Passengers without symptoms would be allowed to disembark the ship, the cruise line announced Wednesday.

So far, two deaths from the disease have been reported outside China, with the latest reported last night in Japan, of a woman in her eighties. COVID-19 seems most dangerous to people over 50 with underlying illnesses like lung disease or diabetes. The US reported its 15th case on Thursday, in a traveler from Wuhan quarantined at JBSA-Lackland air base in Texas. More than 600 such travellers remain under quarantine in the US, and the CDC has predicted that more cases will turn up among them.

In the last week, experts such as NIAID’s Anthony Fauci have suggested this month will tell us whether COVID-19 remains largely bottled up in China, or whether it turns into a global pandemic. The hope is that warmer months, which typically drive down infections with other more common types of coronavirus (responsible for 10% to 30% of common colds) will lead to a subsidence of cases in the Northern Hemisphere, Fauci told BuzzFeed News. This would also give hospitals and public health systems more time to prepare if there is a resurgence of the outbreak.

In a press conference on Wednesday before the jump in cases announced by China, WHO noted a downturn in the numbers of newly reported cases, from 3,700 new cases on Feb. 5 to 2,000 new cases on Feb. 12, but had cautioned against seeing that as a turning point in the outbreak.

“In a country as vast as China, it is doubtful health authorities can find all cases and contacts,” Georgetown University’s Lawrence Gostin told BuzzFeed News. Ebola cases in a still ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, have plateaued several times only to rise again, he noted. “So we need to be exceedingly cautious interpreting these numbers.”

The biggest need in the outbreak right now is for the development of a blood test for antibodies to the disease, which can give a true picture of its spread and how deadly it is. Currently, case reports based on the most severe cases are suggesting a 2% mortality rate, while Chinese provinces away from Hubei say it is much lower, around 0.16%.

In the long term, many public health experts see COVID-19 spreading worldwide either this year or next year, given its apparent infectiousness and the thousands of cases already confirmed.

“Even with a high success rate in stopping these local chains of transmission outside China, it is nearly inevitable that multiple novel corona-virus transmission events may result in some failures in containment efforts,” Eyal Leshem of Israel’s Tel Aviv University School of Medicine told BuzzFeed News by email. “My interpretation is that the likelihood of sustained transmission outside China is becoming high.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
After 200,000 Orders in 2 Minutes: Xiaomi Accelerates Marketing in Europe
Ukraine Declares De Facto War on Hungary and Slovakia with Terror Drone Strikes on Their Gas Lifeline
Animated K-pop Musical ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Becomes Netflix’s Most-Watched Original Animated Film
New York Appeals Court Voids Nearly $500 Million Civil Fraud Penalty Against Trump While Upholding Fraud Liability
Elon Musk tweeted, “Europe is dying”
Far-Right Activist Convicted of Incitement Changes Gender and Demands: "Send Me to a Women’s Prison" | The Storm in Germany
Hungary Criticizes Ukraine: "Violating Our Sovereignty"
Will this be the first country to return to negative interest rates?
Child-free hotels spark controversy
North Korea is where this 95-year-old wants to die. South Korea won’t let him go. Is this our ally or a human rights enemy?
Hong Kong Launches Regulatory Regime and Trials for HKD-Backed Stablecoins
China rehearses September 3 Victory Day parade as imagery points to ‘loyal wingman’ FH-97 family presence
Trump Called Viktor Orbán: "Why Are You Using the Veto"
Horror in the Skies: Plane Engine Exploded, Passengers Sent Farewell Messages
MSNBC Rebrands as MS NOW Amid Comcast’s Cable Spin-Off
AI in Policing: Draft One Helps Speed Up Reports but Raises Legal and Ethical Concerns
Shame in Norway: Crown Princess’s Son Accused of Four Rapes
Apple Begins Simultaneous iPhone 17 Production in India and China
A Robot to Give Birth: The Chinese Announcement That Shakes the World
Finnish MP Dies by Suicide in Parliament Building
Outrage in the Tennis World After Jannik Sinner’s Withdrawal Storm
William and Kate Are Moving House – and the New Neighbors Were Evicted
Class Action Lawsuit Against Volkswagen: Steering Wheel Switches Cause Accidents
Taylor Swift on the Way to the Super Bowl? All the Clues Stirring Up Fans
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Apple Expands Social Media Presence in China With RedNote Account Ahead of iPhone 17 Launch
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Cambridge Dictionary Adds 'Skibidi,' 'Delulu,' and 'Tradwife' Amid Surge of Online Slang
Bill Barr Testifies No Evidence Implicated Trump in Epstein Case; DOJ Set to Release Records
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
The CEO Who Replaced 80% of Employees for the AI Revolution: "I Would Do It Again"
Emails Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Character.ai Bets on Future of AI Companionship
China Ramps Up Tax Crackdown on Overseas Investments
Japanese Office Furniture Maker Expands into Bomb Shelter Market
Intel Shares Surge on Possible U.S. Government Investment
Hurricane Erin Threatens U.S. East Coast with Dangerous Surf
EU Blocks Trade Statement Over Digital Rule Dispute
EU Sends Record Aid as Spain Battles Wildfires
JPMorgan Plans New Canary Wharf Tower
Zelenskyy and his allies say they will press Trump on security guarantees
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Escalating Clashes in Serbia as Anti-Government Protests Spread Nationwide
The Drought in Britain and the Strange Request from the Government to Delete Old Emails
Category 5 Hurricane in the Caribbean: 'Catastrophic Storm' with Winds of 255 km/h
"No, Thanks": The Mathematical Genius Who Turned Down 1.5 Billion Dollars from Zuckerberg
The surprising hero, the ugly incident, and the criticism despite victory: "Liverpool’s defense exposed in full"
Digital Humans Move Beyond Sci-Fi: From Virtual DJs to AI Customer Agents
YouTube will start using AI to guess your age. If it’s wrong, you’ll have to prove it
×