In this Tuesday, March 10, 2020, photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping talks by video with patients and medical workers at the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. Top Chinese officials secretly determined they were likely facing a pandemic from a novel coronavirus in mid-January, ordering preparations even as they downplayed it in public.
“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. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.”
But what is clear, experts say, is that China’s rigid controls on information, bureaucratic hurdles and a reluctance to send bad news up the chain of command muffled early warnings.broadcast on national television on Jan. 2, sent a chill through the city’s hospitals. “Allegations of a cover-up or lack of transparency in China are groundless,” said foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a Thursday press conference.The documents show that the head of China’s National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei, laid out a grim assessment of the situation on Jan. 14 in a confidential teleconference with provincial health officials.
“With the coming of the Spring Festival, many people will be traveling, and the risk of transmission and spread is high,” the memo continued. “All localities must prepare for and respond to a pandemic.”
Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)
rwang0 6 days seems pretty good compared to other countries who, btw, already knew of the virus from China
A frickin communist dictatorship. The same like the oh so wonderful Gorbatschow with Chernobyl...
And what will be the repercussions for them?
In America an extra 6 days wouldn’t have made a difference...
6 days seems reasonable. Considering they didn't know what it really was. Lightyears better than 75 days of Trump's: - it's a Democrat hoax. - Much safer than the flu. - Will magically go away. - It's nothing Things China never came even close to doing.
ChairosY Is all their fault, hiding data in a criminal
janemarkland52 Point is taken that China lies and covers-up, considering they are not a democratic country, it should be obvious. But US Intel warned about China in Nov, trump was briefed in Dec, and praised China in Jan. trump repeatedly denied the seriousness of illness, then cover-up too!
and realDonaldTrump ignored everything for a month..your point?
Not only in China. 'Everybody' also thought this would be like SARS, MERS, the swine flu and burn itself out. We were all wrong. There is no point in playing the blame game.
And AP dare to publish it out... are you helping China? Stop compare the response between China and USA.. stop complementing us! We need to be humble😬😂😝
ChinaLiedPeopleDied and therefore the global community should be united to BoycottChineseProducts. ChinaMustPay
But that’s normal human nature. Morality in the world is a rare commodity.
what is your conclusion? China's respose is still much faster than rest of the world, plus hugh sacrifice which no one could ever lock down a provenience with 60 million people without scientific evdinence, will AP ever report that?
Thank God it happened in China first，if it was in US，Trump wouldn't figure it out within 60 days. Just look what he has done even he has been fully informed of what it is within the first 60 days！
They needed time for the plague bearers to get to their targets
So take 6 days off the 6 weeks that Western leaders like Trump lied and lied to the public with eyes wide open and did nothing. Feeling better now?
CHINA SUX....Liars!!
rwang0 What’s the punishment for China?
NardBell China needs to pay for all the deaths they have cost the world.
Why don't you put up your proof for this narrative !? research or study that you have for this!? So everyone can authenticate what you are claiming!?
The CCP has been lying from the start. The official death toll they say is complete and only a fool would believe it. I would say its no less than 100k.
Should they have lied to their people for several months like Trump did. Why does the press still have this American bias. We're the biggest criminals on the planet. Our system is based on corruption. I'm sure China has big problems to. We all do now but don't play favorites.
Lol what else did you expect from the Chinese COMMUNIST Party?
Not sure why anyone would be surprised by this. They are a communist regime and have a history of stuff like this.
CCP propaganda. Nice work, AP. China knew about it in December, covered it up, destroyed samples. Continued lying about it into January. Death tolls in China are still unknown.
China is currently trying to blame it all on Africa. DistustingChinese
And Trump played golf , lied and did nothing for 70 days
Now do Trump
Just like the Russians and Chernobyl. When hiding the truth goes too far.
This was what was being pushed on the 14th of January Russia closed its borders with China on the 20th of January, the rest of the World should have done the same as Russia.
Trump would have known on day 1 but he fired the epidemiologist Obama had placed in Chinese National health institute. Americans (except the stock dumpers in Congress) didn’t know for nearly 65 days.
What had a greater impact? Those 6 days, or after that when western governments didn't do a damn thing for a month? Transparent buck passing bs.
我靠，1月你们知道了，3月你们爆发了，还有脸说？
BS it's ChiCom supported lab created.
The comunism way to deal with humans!
Good AP, 👍. This is what you should be writing about, not how many scoops of ice cream trump eats.
“China’s attempt to walk a line between alerting the public and avoiding panic set the stage for a pandemic” why choose to hide instead of addressing the issue? CCP is no doubt responsible for coronavirus, but when we fail to see why & how they hide, we should expect another one
JAIL TIME WORKS
Good story
Tell CNN
Far longer.
And trump failed to act for 70 days after he knew.
We expect this shit from China—not from the United States ffs
First case of coronavirus in USA and South Korea was Jan 21. Today, SK has 214 deaths from Covid-19. Singapore has 8. Thailand has 38. Taiwan has 6. Hong Kong has 4. USA has over 21,000 deaths from Covid-19. The USA is doing it wrong.
But we told the world at the very beginning. Other country don't relaze the. scale of this virus.
Yes Thailand raise the alert too.
Seriously, you should have done a lot more and sooner!! Maybe take the wax out your ears as well and start listening.
yup. I live on Thai. Chinese leaving for CNY 1 should not have been allowed to leave and 2 Thai should have closed its own border but wanted the $$$
Sounds similar to USA’s handling of the virus.
In the other words China took only a days to understand this Pandemic right ?
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