SPECIAL REPORT: How China’s deadly coronavirus cover-up killed tens of thousands

China’s deadly coronavirus coverup in the early days of the crisis more than doubled the number of people now infected across the world. The findings were contained in a damning University of Southampton report which found if the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organisation had heeded warnings a single week earlier infection could have been reduced by 66 per cent. If the WHO had acted just three weeks earlier nearly 95 per cent of today’s infections and deaths would not have happened. More than 1.5 million people have been infected with COVID-19 so far and 94,500 have died. The study raises more questions about the WHO’s failure to recommend early travel bans based on advice from China that the disease could not be transmitted from human-to-human contact. Taiwanese officials told the WHO on December 31 they had enough evidence to confirm the virus could be transmitted human-to-human but the WHO ignored that advice because China disagreed. “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission,” the WHO said on January 14 – already two weeks later than first being informed. Then on January 22 an emergency committee debated declaring a global emergency and banning travel to China. A Sky News Australia investigation revealed last week the WHO was refusing to name who blocked calls for a travel ban at that meeting and what say China had in the decision. Beijing resisted and the group of doctors calling for widespread travel bans were overruled. It took another week for the WHO to reverse that decision, implement travel ban recommendations and label the crisis a global emergency. According the data trend calculated by Dr Shengjie Lai in the Southampton study, that four week delay was responsible for nearly every infection and death in the world today. In a more disturbing twist WHO general director Tedros Adhanom, who the Financial Times reports was planted at the organisation’s head by Chinese pressure, has begun politicising his failures by attacking the Taiwan officials who warned him about the pending pandemic. In a bizarre televised rant the Ethiopian national claimed to have been the victim have racial slurs and even death threats. He also linked those attacks to Taiwan without providing evidence. “I can tell you personal attacks that have been going on for more than two, three months,” he said at a press conference in Geneva. “Abuses, or racist comments, giving me names, black or Negro. “I’m proud of being black, proud of being Negro. “I don’t care, to be honest ... even death threats. I don’t give a damn. “This (racial) attack came from Taiwan. “We need to be honest. I will be straight today. From Taiwan.”

from World | Daily Telegraph https://ift.tt/3ca9thR