U.S. Intelligence Community has resolved that China covered the length of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak in the country, Bloomberg News proclaimed on Wednesday.
A detailed report presented to the White House affirms that China deliberately reduced its reported number of coronavirus cases, according to three officials accustomed with the matter. The officials did not show if the report assesses what China’s real infection rate is.
The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country had publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, which compiles data on worldwide infections and deaths.
On his part, “The reality is that we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming,” Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday on CNN.
The news comes a day after Dr Deborah Birx, response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, implied that the U.S. response to the pandemic may not have been as efficient as possible due to “missing” data from China, she said .
“When you looked at the China data originally,” with 50,000 infected in an area of China with 80 million people, “you start thinking of this more like SARS than you do a global pandemic,” Birx said at a press conference.
U.S. officials and lawmakers have frequently accused China of covering up the length of the outbreak. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pressed fellow nations to be transparent about the information they share concerning the coronavirus.
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