China didn’t alert the World Health Organization (WHO) to the coronavirus outbreak, a new timeline released by the WHO shows.
China’s propaganda machine has claimed that China quickly reported the viral outbreak to the WHO, a claim that the WHO’s initial timeline supported. But the WHO found out about the outbreak from the internet, not from Chinese officials contacting them, according to the new timeline.
The updated timeline, which was released June 29, says the WHO “picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website” and also picked up a report on an American website, though it doesn’t say in what order those two events occurred.
The WHO doesn’t link to the Wuhan health commission’s media statement that it says tipped the organization off to the outbreak. Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed skepticism that the statement even exists.
“Even if the Commission posted something on their website – which we have seen no proof they have – the CCP still did not report the outbreak to the WHO as required by the International Health Regulations,” McCaul said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“As the updated WHO timeline clearly states, WHO staff ‘picked up a media statement…from their website’ – it was not sent to them by any officials in China,” the Texas Republican continued. (RELATED: WHO Official Says She Suspected Human-To-Human COVID-19 Transmission ‘Right From The Start’ — But The WHO Echoed Misleading Chinese Claims To The Contrary For Weeks)
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
“I have repeatedly requested information from the WHO about what they knew and when they knew it, and I would welcome any clarity from them on this. But, so far, they have refused to answer any of those requests,” McCaul added.
The WHO didn’t return the DCNF’s request for comment.
Dr. Michael Ryan, a top WHO official, previously said in an April 20 news conference that the American website, ProMED, gave the WHO its first indication of the coronavirus outbreak.
“On 31st December information on our epidemic intelligence from open-source platform partners, PRO-MED, was received indicating a signal of a cluster of pneumonia cases in China. That was from open sources from Wuhan,” Ryan said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus then corrected Ryan during the news conference. Tedros said that “the report first came from China – that’s fact number one – from Wuhan itself.”
Tedros won his post with China’s backing and has consistently echoed Chinese propaganda about the coronavirus, the DCNF has previously reported.
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