A doctor from Wuhan — the epicenter of the novel coronavirus pandemic — has accused the Chinese Communist Party of “information hiding” and that at least “another zero” should be added the death toll in an interview with Japanese media republished by Yahoo! News.

The explosive charges come from an interview with an “active doctor who was treating corona patients in Wuhan.”

The whistleblower alleges China’s coronavirus case count is “unreliable” and that the Chinese government demanded death certificates be “rewritten so that the number of deaths due to the new Corona seems to be smaller.”

Specifically, “instructions [that] were from the local disease prevention and control department” compelled doctors to cite other diseases such as diabetes or high blood pressure, instead of coronavirus, as the cause of death.

Therefore, the doctor states that “it is better to add another 0” to China’s coronavirus death toll, which at the time, had been reported at 3,869.

The source describes the instructions, in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy of withholding data from the World Health Organization and the world writ large, as persisting for several months: “I received the instruction in February. It continued until the zero infected person was announced on April 18.”

While the Wuhan government has denied accusations of a far-reaching cover-up, the city’s own residents have insisted their own government is withholding information.

For example, Yang Satoshi, whose 24-year-old daughter died of coronavirus, told NNN in Japan that the Chinese government failed to “disclose information to its citizens”:

“I did not receive any information such as the new corona being contagious or potentially deadly. I wouldn’t let my daughter go out if I knew the possibility of human-to-human transmission. I would like you to explain why the government did not disclose information to its citizens.”