“China’s lack of candor” about coronavirus impaired the world’s response to the pandemic, says VP Pence

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Vice President Mike Pence said the world would have been able to take better action against the coronavirus pandemic if China had been more candid with their information.
• The first report of the disease in China was late last year and only reached the U.S. reports mid-January.
• China has been accused of multiple cover-ups since the beginning of the outbreak.

In an interview on Fox News Radio’s “The Brian Kilmeade Show”, Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that there is “no question” that the world would have been able to respond better to the coronavirus outbreak if China had been more forthcoming with accurate information.

The first report of the outbreak in China was late last year. Only when the first patient was diagnosed mid-January at an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, Washington, did it reach reports in the United States.

On Wednesday, the number of reported cases in the U.S. went over 210,000 and just over 5,100 fatalities. In China, just over 82,000 cases were recorded before their numbers started to level off.

President Trump said that China’s number of cases “seem to be a little on the light side.” Robert C. O’Brien, National Security Adviser, told reporters during Wednesday’s daily news briefing that currently, there is no way to report the numbers being reported by the Chinese government.

The White House also received a classified report where three U.S. intelligence officers concluded that the Chinese government has been underreporting both total cases and deaths from the coronavirus, concealing the extent of the outbreak.

China has been accused of many cover-ups since the start of the pandemic, going after critics, physicians and whistleblowers who tried to warn about the virus. Wednesday, China’s National Health Commission acknowledged that asymptomatic patients were not included in its overall coronavirus cases tally. They began to do so and Beijing updated its data on Wednesday to include 1,367 cases of asymptomatic patients.

Source: Fox News