Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service.

We are weekly guide to the numbers all around us in the news and in life, and I'm Tim

Haafard.

A couple of weeks ago, we spoke to Dr Natalie McDermott of King's College London about

the new coronavirus.

She explained the highly uncertain numbers behind the spread of the disease and she told

us that it wasn't a global pandemic, at least not yet.

A lot's happened in the last two weeks, more cases, more deaths and the virus even has

a name now, Covid-19.

And strikingly on Wednesday night, there was a sharp revision of the figures coming out

of China, with deaths up 20% and cases up about a third overnight.

So first thing Thursday morning, Dr McDermott came into the studio to tell us what was new.

The figures went up by about 15 and a half thousand cases and went up by about just over

220 deaths.

And at first it was a little bit unclear why that had happened and we're still trying to

get the exact details of what happened, but it seems that the case definition in Hubei

province and Wuhan for a confirmed case of Covid-19 has changed and subsequently there's

a lot more people being included within that confirmed case definition now.

What we don't know is how many of those people were just in the last 24 hours or if some

of this is looking back over the last week or two and bringing in historical cases.

Do you trust the Chinese figures?

What we've seen over the last week has been a little bit confusing.

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