The story is implausible because it rests on top-secret data about the "real" number of cases being shared with Tencent News and making it all the way to the lowly data-entry operator updating their website. All those disease-tracking websites in China I'm aware of link to a long list of local government press releases and seem to simply aggregate the numbers in those.

https://xw.qq.com/act/qgfeiyan

https://news.sina.cn/zt_d/yiqing0121

https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneumonia

I don't believe they have privileged access to government secrets. If the government wants to hide something, the last thing they're going to do is share that data with a news org.