In a new documentary to be broadcast on Tuesday, Chinese medics claim that Chinese hospitals were told by the communist government to cover up their knowledge of people dying from the coronavirus and the fact that there was human-to-human transmission at least one month before China informed the World Health Organization of those facts.
The ITV documentary “Outbreak: The Virus That Shook The World,” which airs on Sky TV Tuesday, tells “the dramatic global story of the first year of Covid-19, tracing the devastation caused by the spread of the virus across four continents.”
The documentary features medical professionals in Wuhan stating that in early December 2019, they discovered that people had died from the virus, but Chinese authorities told hospitals “not to tell the truth.” The medics also claim that some local people wanted to cancel Lunar New Year festivities (which could have spread the virus), but the events were held in order to “present a harmonious and prosperous society.”
“We all felt there shouldn’t be any doubt about human-to-human transmission,” one medic stated. Another medic said, “We knew this virus transmitted from human-to-human. But when we attended a hospital meeting, we were told not to speak out. The provincial leaders told the hospitals not to tell the truth.”
“As late as January 12, the WHO was saying there was ‘no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission’ and said it was ‘reassured of the quality’ of China’s response,” the Daily Mail noted, adding, “By January 21, when the WHO issued its first situation report on the virus, the disease had infected at least 278 people in China and spread to three other countries.”
On Monday, a panel commissioned by the World Health Organization admitted, “What is clear to the panel is that public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China in January.
As The Associated Press reported last June, WHO initially lauded China: “Throughout January, the World Health Organization publicly praised China for what it called a speedy response to the new coronavirus. It repeatedly thanked the Chinese government for sharing the genetic map of the virus ‘immediately,’ and said its work and commitment to transparency were ‘very impressive, and beyond words.’”
Dr. Yi-Chun Lo, the deputy director-general of the Centers for Disease Control in Taiwan, stated, “The very early outbreak management was just a mess, a failure. I think the pandemic could have been avoided at the beginning if China was transparent about the outbreak and was quick to provide necessary information to the world.”
Dr. Yin-Ching Chuang, from the Infectious Diseases Prevention and Treatment Network in Taiwan, asserted that he and his team persisted in trying to visit China to ascertain whether there were human-to-human transmission and finally were given a sliver of truth.
“We asked a lot of questions, very unwillingly they finally came out and said limited human-to-human transmission can’t be ruled out,” he said. “What was the scale of infection? How big was this epidemic? How many patients were affected? We didn’t know. Only they knew this. Why didn’t China inform other countries of this human-to-human matter earlier?”