US President Donald Trump has claimed China must have more COVID-19 deaths than the US, because it's "a massive country".
Official statistics out of China, where the pandemic began late last year, have the death toll at 4632 - eighth in the world. The US meanwhile has reported 40,478 deaths, despite the first coming less than two months ago.
The US death toll is now 8.7 times higher than China's, according to each nation's reported figures.
Trump, who in February predicted the number of US cases would be "down to close to zero... within a couple of days", told reporters at the weekend the US didn't' have "the most in the world deaths".
"The most in the world has to be China. It's a massive country, it's gone through a tremendous problem with this, a tremendous problem - they must have the most."
China has received praise from the World Health Organization for its efforts in controlling the spread of the virus, irking Trump, who has threatened to pull the US' funding for the agency in response.
China at the weekend revised its death toll upwards by 1290, saying it had uncovered more fatalities missed in Wuhan in the initial confusion at the start of the outbreak.
"There has never been any concealment, and we'll never allow any concealment," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told Al Jazeera.
That brought the toll in Wuhan, where the virus was first spotted, up 50 percent. Trump wrongly called it a "doubling up on the numbers" and accused China of "not talking about outside of Wuhan".
Anthony Fauci, the US' equivalent of our own Ashley Bloomfield, said he doesn't "feel confident at all" that China's figures are accurate.
"That number's really rather a low number, that number surprises me that that number is so low," he told Fox News.
But he was less keen on starting a war of words with China, a frequent target of Trump's ire over his three years as US President.
"It is what it is, it's behind us, let's move ahead and address our own problem."
There have been anecdotal reports of massive queues to buy urns and coffins, and Bloomberg reported three weeks ago US intelligence had determined China was downplaying both the number of confirmed infections and the death toll. That was before China's recent revision of the death toll in Wuhan.
In recent weeks, China's reported only double-digit increases in confirmed infections, mostly in arrivals from overseas.
Health officials have credited China's suppression of the virus - if true - with its strict lockdown measures. In contrast, the US has struggled to keep much of its population at home, with protests against social distancing efforts and business closures breaking out across the country - even as the death toll, already nearly twice as high as any other country's, climbs.
