According to a new classified report for the White House, Beijing undercounted the number of deaths and cases of coronavirus.
According to claims by US intelligence officials, China has covered up the coronavirus outbreak numbers.
The report was done for the Trump administration.
Three US officials were cited and spoke on anonymity condition and said that the public reporting of China for their infections and deaths was incomplete on purpose.
Two of the officials said that the figures of China concerning the coronavirus aren’t real. However, no other details of the findings from this report have been revealed.
What Did China Have to Say about These Claims?
China rejected the conclusions of the report and their foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying said that the country has been transparent about the outbreak and accused Washington of trying to shift the blame.
Anyhow, these claims come after several weeks of suspicion that China hasn’t given the exact numbers of the outbreak cases in their country.
They’ve reported 82,000 diagnosed cases and 3,300 deaths from the covid-19 and their death toll is much lower than that of the US, Spain, and Italy.
And, the US have surpassed China fast and recorded the biggest outbreak with a total of 213,372 infections and 4,475 deaths until now, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
The president of the US denied reading any intelligence report about the China outbreak; but he did say on a White House briefing that the numbers of China seem a bit on the light side and that he’s being nice saying that.
Scientists Are Also Having Doubts?
Some health experts also joined the scepticism ‘crew’ concerning the outbreak in the Asian country.
The chairman of the France WMA said that the figures of China can’t be trusted.
Dr. Frank Montgomery said that the low Chinese numbers didn’t make sense and he suggested that they may’ve been giving false figures on purpose.
However, he also said that other countries also have uncertain numbers because better data isn’t always available, mostly because of lack of testing.
China Knew about the Coronavirus since November 2019?
The US VP Mike Pence said that the officials in China may have known about the outbreak a month or so before the first reports were publicly announced in December.
The Republicans in Congress were outraged about the Chinese deception and some even called it‘garbage propaganda’.
And, the Republican senator Ben Sasse also said that the claim that the US has more deaths than China from the virus is inaccurate.
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