Chinese medics have been secretly filmed admitting they knew how dangerous the coronavirus was when it began to wreak havoc in Wuhan – but say they were told to lie about it.
Medical professionals in Wuhan say they knew about virus deaths as early as December 2019, but it was mid-January before China first informed the WHO of a fatality.
They also realised that the virus was passing between humans, but hospitals were told ‘not to tell the truth’ and calls to scrap Lunar New Year festivities were rejected because authorities wanted to ‘present a harmonious and prosperous society’.
The new testimony, which will be broadcast tonight in an ITV documentary called Outbreak: The Virus That Shook The World, flies in the face of China’s denials that it covered up the epidemic in its earliest days.
It comes amid growing pressure on China after a WHO-backed panel said on Monday that Beijing was too slow to respond to the outbreak, days after the US published new claims suggesting the virus could have leaked from a Wuhan lab.
The video also adds to a growing body of evidence that China lied to the world about the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, allowing it to balloon into a global pandemic.
Medical professionals in Wuhan have been secretly filmed saying they knew about virus deaths as early as December 2019 and realised that the virus was spreading among humans
The Jinyintan hospital in Wuhan where some of the earliest known coronavirus patients were admitted in late December 2019
China first informed the WHO of 27 cases of the then-unknown disease on December 31, 2019, with no deaths reported until mid-January.
But Chinese medics filmed secretly by a citizen journalist say they knew before then that the virus was deadly.
One medic said: ‘Actually, at the end of December or beginning of January, the relative of someone I know died of this virus. Many of those living with him were also infected, including people I know.’
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…
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