US intelligence says China covered up extent of coronavirus outbreak
China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths from the virus, the US intelligence community said in a report to the White House, according to three US officials.
The accuracy of China’s official numbers has been frequently questioned, even by residents of Wuhan, who said that the death toll of 2,531 in Wuhan, “can’t be right”. Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have sparked public skepticism about Beijing’s reporting.
The officials said that that China’s reporting is intentionally incomplete. They added the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake. The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths. In contrast, the US has more than 240,000 cases and more than 5,800 deaths.
“The reality is that we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming,” US vice president Mike Pence said Wednesday, adding that it is “evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China”.
China also triggered skepticism when it reported zero new local cases in Wuhan from March 18 to March 22. On Wednesday, the country for the first time started to publish daily data on asymptomatic cases, which it admitted were infectious.
On Sunday, top UK officials said that scientists have warned that China could have downplayed its number of cases of the virus “by a factor of 15 to 40 times”. They also believe China is trying to expand its economic power through offering help to other countries which are currently trying to combat the virus.
The development of medical therapies and public-health measures to combat the virus “so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired”, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said.