In a report, CNN has confirmed what the Trump Administration has been saying since February, China lied.
From China’s own health chiefs, a leaked report appears to expose a catalog of cover-ups that hid the true dangers and rapid spread of COVID-19 that has since killed 1.5 million people globally.
CNN said it had investigated information in a 117-page report marked “internal document, please keep confidential.” The leaked files that CNN obtained expose China’s mishandled COVID-19 response, including how Beijing downplayed data, taking weeks to diagnose new cases.
The files show that:
- China’s system took on average 23 days to diagnose confirmed patients.
- Testing failures meant most of those swabbed for COVID-19 received negative results until January 10.
- Underfunding, understaffing, poor morale and government red tape hindered China’s early warning system.
“China had an image to protect internationally, and lower-ranking officials had a clear incentive to under-report – or to show their superiors that they were under-reporting, to outside eyes,” said Andrew Mertha, director of the China Studies Program at John Hopkins University, to the New York Post.
China delayed releasing COVID-19 information, which has so far resulted in nearly 1.5 million deaths globally. It reportedly shows that local health officials in Hubei listed a total of 5,918 newly detected COVID-19 cases on February 10th and that the immediate impact of the virus in Wuhan also significantly impacted the neighboring cities of Yichang and Xianning.
CNN says: “It remains unclear what impact or connection the influenza spike had on the COVID-19 outbreak.” The information has been verified by six independent experts who examined their content’s authenticity, CNN reported.
Throughout January, the World Health Organisation (WHO), publicly praised China for what it called a ‘speedy response’ to this new coronavirus and repeatedly thanked the Chinese government for sharing the genetic map of the virus “immediately,” and said its work and commitment to transparency were “very impressive, and beyond words.”
According to the Associated Press, China, in fact, sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information. Chinese government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on a virologist website on January 11th. China stalled for at least two weeks to provide WHO with detailed data on patients and cases when the outbreak arguably might have been dramatically slowed. WHO was clueless.
The Trump administration claimed ‘China lied’ on multiple occasions and insisted that the numbers in China were far higher than what was being reported.
In April 2020, the President Trump announced the US would suspend financial support for the WHO after he accused the United Nations agency of “severely mismanaging” the global response and “pushing misinformation” from China’s government.
“The United States’ notice of withdrawal, effective July 6, 2021, has been submitted to the U.N. secretary-general, who is the depository for the W.H.O.”
On Monday, Donald Trump Jr. mocked CNN in a tweet saying, “CNN FINALLY REALIZES CHINA LIED 10 MONTHS LATER,”
“Shocker… The better question for @CNN is why they waited until after the election for their public epiphany that China misled the world about Coronavirus. This isn’t news,” Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y. tweeted.
Officials in China pushed back against the administration’s claims and have accused the president of relying on China to shift the blame for his own mishandling of the pandemic response.