International
China Admits To Destroying Early Coronavirus Samples
China has acknowledged it destroyed early samples of COVID-19, confirming a claim put forward by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo late last month.
On Friday, Liu Dengfeng, a supervisor with China’s National Health Commission, admitted that ‘the Chinese government issued an order on January 3 to dispose of coronavirus samples’ at unauthorized laboratories, according to Newsweek.
But Liu denied that the samples were destroyed as part of a cover-up, insisting that they were disposed of so as to ‘prevent risk to laboratory biological safety and prevent secondary disasters caused by unidentified pathogens.’
He stated that the labs were ‘unauthorized’ to handle such samples, and they had to be terminated in order to comply with Chinese public health laws.
Liu did not specify how many labs destroyed coronavirus samples.
The admission comes amid souring diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China over the COVID-19 outbreak – which originated in Wuhan late last year.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month accused the Asian superpower of not being transparent about the spread of the coronavirus.
‘The Chinese Communist Party still has not shared the virus sample from inside of China with the outside world, making it impossible to track the disease’s evolution,’ Pompeo stated at a briefing on April 22.
‘We strongly believe that the Chinese Communist Party did not report the outbreak of the new coronavirus in a timely fashion to the World Health Organisation,’ he added.
‘Even after the CCP did notify the WHO of the coronavirus outbreak, China didn’t share all of the information that it had.’
Pompeo continued: ‘Instead it covered up how dangerous the disease is, It didn’t report sustained human-to-human transmission.
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The 15-page document brands Beijing’s secrecy over the pandemic an ‘assault on international transparency’ and points to cover-up tactics deployed by the regime.
It claims that the Chinese government silenced its most vocal critics and scrubbed any online scepticism about its handling of the health emergency from the internet.
China has roundly come under fire for suppressing the scale of its early outbreak which did not afford other nations time to react before the disease hit their shores.
Source: Daily Mail
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