Dr. Zhong Nanshan, the Chinese government's senior medical adviser and the public face of the country's fight against Covid-19, also confirmed in an exclusive interview with CNN on Saturday that local authorities in Wuhan, the city where the novel coronavirus was first reported in December, had suppressed key details about the magnitude of the initial outbreak. China has reported more than 82,000 coronavirus cases, with at least 4,633 deaths, according to data from the country's National Health Commission (NHC). The number of new infections surged quickly in late January, prompting city lockdowns and nationwide travel bans.
By early February, China was reporting as many as 3,887 fresh cases a day. A month later, however, daily cases had dropped into the double digits -- while in the US, the number of daily infections skyrocketed, from 47 new cases on March 6 to 22,562 by the end of the month.
