China didn't warn public for 6 days after realizing coronavirus could turn into a pandemic, new documents reveal
Chinese leaders covered up information about the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic for six days after learning of it, new documents have revealed.
Top officials in the country were informed they were dealing with a major health crisis on January 14, according to the Daily Mail, but they only decided to warn the public on January 20, by which point thousands had been infected.
January 14, was also the same day when the World Health Organization now-infamously tweeted, "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China"
During those crucial six days, Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak which is also a major travel hub, hosted a mass banquet that was attended by tens of thousands of people, and millions traveled across the country for the Lunar New Year celebrations.
There were clear signs then, too. It was reported that hundreds of patients had been going to hospitals in the city showing symptoms of COVID-19.
When President Xi Jinping finally warned the public on January 20 that the outbreak "must be taken seriously," the virus had already silently swept through thousands and made its way overseas. It has now infected more than two million people and caused over 128,000 death worldwide, according to John Hopkins University's live-tracking dashboard.
"This is tremendous," said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient."
While the Chinese government has repeatedly denied allegations that it suppressed information in the early days of the pandemic, most recently via foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, internal documents seemingly indicate otherwise.
The documents, which were from an anonymous source in the medical field, detailed how the head of China's National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei had painted a grim assessment of the situation in a confidential January 14 teleconference with provincial health officials.
"The epidemic situation is still severe and complex, the most severe challenge since SARS in 2003, and is likely to develop into a major public health event," Ma had reportedly said in a memo.
In a section titled 'sober understanding of the situation,' it singled out a case in Thailand and said the situation had changed considerably because a case had been reported abroad and said, "All localities must prepare for and respond to a pandemic."
That teleconference was held to convey instructions on the coronavirus from President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, though it is unclear what those instructions ultimately were.
The National Health Commission had subsequently distributed a 63-page set of instructions to provincial health officials marked "not to be publicly disclosed" which ordered public health officials to identify suspected cases, hospitals to open fever clinics, and doctors and nurses to don protective gear.
Despite this, the threat was downplayed in public, with Li Qun, the head of the China CDC's emergency center, telling Chinese state television on January 15 that "the risk of sustained human-to-human transmission is low."