China covered up outbreak: House report —
GOPers also rip WHO for abetting coverup
The coronavirus pandemic might have been prevented if not for Chinese coverups in the early days of the outbreak and the World Health Organization “parroting” Beijing propaganda, according to a damning audit from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The 96-page report — obtained by The Post ahead of its planned Monday release — says the Chinese Communist Party destroyed evidence and buried troubling data on the outbreak, while nationalizing the supply chains and limiting exports of US companies 3M and General Motors, keeping key goods in the country.
“It is beyond doubt that the CCP actively engaged in a coverup designed to obfuscate data, hide relevant publichealth information and suppress doctors and journalists who attempted to warn the world,” reads the report, authored by Republican members of the Democrat-held committee.
Had China been more transparent and proactive when the first signs of the burgeoning health crisis emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, the outbreak could have been largely contained — potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide, the lawmakers wrote.
“Research shows the CCP could have reduced the number of cases in China by up to 95 percent had it fulfilled its obligations under international law and responded to the outbreak in a manner consistent with best practices,” the report said, citing a study on Medrxiv, a Yale University-linked online clearinghouse for medical manuscripts.
“It is highly likely the ongoing pandemic could have been prevented.”
Instead, on Jan. 1, CCP officials ordered that the Wuhan wet market from which the contagion is believed to have sprung “be closed and sanitized, destroying forensic evidence that may have provided insight into the origins of the outbreak,” the report said.
Allegedly aiding and abetting that breakdown was the WHO and its director-general, Tedros Adhanom, according to the lawmakers, who called for Tedros’ resignation.
“The WHO has been complicit in the spread and normalization of CCP propaganda and disinformation,” they wrote. “Director-General Tedros should accept responsibility for his detrimental impact on the COVID-19 response and resign.”
While China tried to sweep the crisis under the rug and was derelict in its duties to inform the international health community — as required under International Health Regulations since the nation similarly erred during the
2002 SARS outbreak — the WHO hardly helped once it got involved, the report says.
Officials at the UN agency publicly acknowledged the outbreak only in a pair of tweets on Jan. 4 — five days after they learned of it through a Chinese media report uploaded onto a US-based Web site for inside medical news.
The WHO also ignored warnings from the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control and the Hong Kong government about humanto-human transmission, incorrectly claiming for weeks that Chinese authorities had found “no evidence” of this — even though China by then knew it was genetically similar to the 2002 SARS strain, which was communicable, the report charges.
“From the early stages of the outbreak, the WHO, under Director-General Tedros’ leadership, parroted and upheld as inviolable truth, statements from the CCP,” the report said. “An examination of their public statements, including the praise heaped on the CCP’s handling of the pandemic, reveal a disturbing willingness to ignore science and alternative credible sources.”
On Jan. 20, WHO investigators finally toured Wuhan, as sweeping quarantine orders were being put into place.
Despite mounting evidence that they and the international community had been misled, Tedros on Jan. 28 praised China on its “transparency.”
He declared a public-health emergency two days later, by which point there were nearly 10,000 diagnosed cases spanning 19 countries — among them China and the US.
As of late Sunday, more than 30 million cases and nearly 1 million deaths had been tallied worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), told The Post that both Tedros and the Chinese government needed to be held accountable for “the suffering they have allowed the world to endure.”
“It is crystal clear that had the CCP been transparent, and had the head of the WHO cared more about global health than appeasing the CCP, lives could have been spared and widespread economic devastation could have been mitigated,” McCaul said.
The WHO’s bumbling response notwithstanding, the Republican committee advised against the US pulling out of the organization, as President Trump indicated he would in July.
“We do not believe the withdrawal of the United States or the establishment of a competing international organization is the best path forward,” the report said. “By remaining part of a WHO that is ready for change, the United States can drive forward the necessary reforms of the International Health Regulations and the WHO.”