I put 3 news items to start, and see they have all the same comments.
I think the commentcounter needs a little holiday, or good weekend.

See image

As you can see, it have all 4 comments. But they dont have it. The first one has only 1 comment.

Hi,

Do any have 4 comments?

I am wondering if it a translation issue.

The language string is in 'global' and is:
_COMMENTS=<strong>{1}</strong> <span>{1|comment|comments}</span>

If it was mistranslated to something like this:
_COMMENTS=<strong>4</strong> <span>{1|comment|comments}</span>

it would cause the issue.

I know that seems a bit unlikely though.

I can't reproduce or see an issue in your code. I'm happy to take a direct look, if you want to send FTP access to me at [email protected].