Theories that China may be hiding a higher coronavirus death toll than what they are reporting sparked after there has been a drop of 21 million cellphone users in the country over past few months.
The information was reported by The Epoch Times, a newspaper which generally opposes the Communist Party of China.
According to the paper, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of China released the latest statistics of mobile phone users in each province on March 19, 2020. It was then compared to the previous statistics which were released back in December of 2019.
Based on data, the number of cellphone users in China in March was 1.58 billion which is almost 21 million less than December's number which is 1.602 billion.
Cellphone-based Health Codes
US-based China affairs commentator, Tang Jingyuan expressed his skepticism about this and also told The Epoch Times the sudden drop in the number of cellphone users is suspicious because the Chinese regime requires all Chinese to use their phones in order to generate health codes which would tell if they can move in China at the moment. He also noted that it is impossible for a person in China to cancel his cellphone.
Moreover, the news outlet also stated that on March 10, the mobile health codes were first launched in China, thus, all people in the country were required by the government to install a cellphone application wherein they will register their personal information. The app then generates a QR code that classifies the persons' health level based on three colors.
The Chinese government stated that the phone-based app and codes were intended to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
What happened to the 21 million cellphone users?
With the drastic drop in cellphone users, people are now questioning if the cellphone accounts which have closed belong to those who have died and that if the number of closed accounts reflects the true number of COVID-19 deaths.
In addition, Tang also said that even if only 10% of the canceled accounts belong to the users who died due to the virus, that would still entail that there are 2 million people who died, which is very far from the 3,333 deaths that they have reported.
However, MIIT's director of Information and Communications Administration, Han Xia said that the sudden drop in cellphone users may have resulted from the closure of businesses back in February. He also added that the drop can be explained since the telecom companies closed their physical stores and people are unable to open new accounts.
As of the moment, the said claims are still unproven. Fact-checking site, snopes.com also stated that there are no available evidence yet to both prove and disprove the claims.
However, The Epoch Times, said that there is something about the coronavirus statistics in China which does not add p to the current situation all over the world, which in despite their large population being affected by the virus, they had a relatively lower death toll compared to other countries.
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