US Congressional report condemns China, WHO for COVID ‘cover-up’

A leaked Congressional report allegedly found that China covered up the severity of the coronavirus outbreak there and, with the help of a ‘complicit’ World Health Organization (WHO), allowed COVID-19 to become a pandemic.  

The report, leaked to the New York Post and set to be released later on Monday, says that the pandemic was ‘likely preventable.’ 

Echoing its sentiments, President Trump slammed China’s President Xi Jinping. 

‘I say it every time I speak. And I’m angry at him [Xi] because they could have stopped this, they could have stopped it easily,’ Trump said on Fox and Friends on Monday. 

Lawmakers claim that China went so far as to destroy evidence in order to downplay coronavirus, while clamping down on exports to US companies for companies, including 3M, which manufactures masks and personal protective equipment. 

WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus continued to praise China for its ‘transparency,’ even as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) suddenly added thousands of previously concealed cases to its total count in April, and suspicions arose around the globe. 

‘The WHO has been complicit in the spread and normalization of CCP propaganda and disinformation,’ the House Foreign Affairs Committee auditors wrote.  

‘Director-General Tedros should accept responsibility for his detrimental impact on the COVID-19 response and resign.’  

China first warned the WHO of a possible new, emerging viral disease on January 3. At the time, it was simply a ‘viral pneumonia of unknown cause,’ in Wuhan. 

The first cases of the unknown illness occurred in late 2019, and the virus was sequenced for the first time by a Chinese lab that suspected it might be highly infectious on January 1. The WHO announced that China had determined the illnesses there were caused by a wholly new virus on January 9. 

This timeline has been the subject of much scrutiny in the US, and is central to the report’s claims that China’s secretive practices left the world vulnerable to COVID-19. 

The report blames cover-ups for opening the floodgates for coronavirus to become a pandemic and says that actual transparency might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives around the world. 

But it stops short of advising the US withdraw from the WHO amid the pandemic – as President Trump intends to do by July of next year. 

A newly leaked Foreign Affairs Committee report claims Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party covered up data on the coronavirus outbreak and allowed a ‘likely preventable’ pandemic to follow 

The report calls for the resignation of WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, slamming him for spreading Chinese ‘propaganda’ in the pandemic’s early days 

When contacted for comment by DailyMail.com, the WHO said it had just received a copy of the report and ‘will review it carefully.’  

In the 96-page report, the lawmakers expressed certainty that China intentionally kept information hidden, at the expense of more than 960,000 deaths around the world as of Monday. 

‘It is beyond doubt that the CCP actively engaged in a cover-up designed to obfuscate data, hide relevant public health information, and suppress doctors and journalists who attempted to warn the world,’ they committee members 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. 

‘It is highly likely the ongoing pandemic could have been prevented.’ 

The report’s claims rest on the timeline from the first illnesses in China, to its eventual choice to alert the WHO to the outbreak. 

It also notes that the WHO ignored the attempts of Chinese whistleblowers to alert the agency to the virus before the CCP’s official report.   

The earliest warning signs of a mysterious illness appeared in China in late 2019.