Three days after Beijing officially recognized an unknown pneumonia cluster in 2020, then Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), called George Gao, his Chinese counterpart. I asked you to call.
“I’ve been trying to contact you, but I’ll try again in a few hours,” he wrote, according to an email obtained by The Epoch Times. It was January 3, 2020.
This will be the first in a series of efforts by the United States to engage with China and provide assistance over the coming weeks.
“Unfortunately, that support was not accepted by the Chinese government,” Redfield later said. Told.. “I think it could have made a big difference.”
Redfield said he had an “extensive discussion” with Gao early in the pandemic and said a team of 20 was ready to fly around the world.
Gao said he personally declined the offer because of lack of approval. In one report..
Review of File acquisition Epoch Times Through the disclosure law request and official statement, we can get another glimpse of how China was interfering with the United States in the early days of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the communist government has developed a more effective COVID-19 containment strategy, providing information on domestic outbreaks when health data was essential to minimize the global spread of the disease. I was suppressing it.
The day after the call, Redfield wrote to Gao again and repeated the offer of US assistance.
“China has tremendous ability to investigate infectious diseases and outbreaks,” he wrote in an email on January 4 with the subject “Offer of Assistance.”
“In the spirit of cooperation, we would like to provide a laboratory for respiratory infections and a CDC technical expert in epidemiology to assist you and the China CDC in identifying this unknown potential new pathogen.”
Two days later, he followed up with the email and attached a letter containing the official letterhead of the US Department of Health and Human Services to extend the formal invitation.
“We look forward to continuing to work closely and be ready to provide additional support,” he wrote in the cover email.
None of the written communications seemed to receive a response. The date range for requests that received emails was from December 1, 2019 to February 1, 2020. Redfield and Gao did not respond to the request for comment.
Later, US Secretary of Health and Welfare Alex Azar revealed that the Trump administration had urged Chinese authorities not to accept US experts. He said their repeated offers were not officially approved until January 29, 2020.
“More cooperation and transparency are the most important steps you can take towards a more effective response,” Azar re-raised the subject in a meeting with the Chinese Minister of Health, 2020. Said in a briefing with a reporter on January 28, 2014.
Nothing has changed after more than a week.
“At this point, it’s really a decision for the Chinese,” a press conference in Washington on February 7, 2020, seven days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency. Said Azar. “We are ready, willing, and competent,” Hazard added. “We are here to support the Chinese government and support China’s response.”
Eventually, the United States and its allies made nearly 100 requests to seek and provide assistance in the early stages of the pandemic, but were rejected by Chinese authorities. US State Department.
At the same time, Chinese authorities were actively curbing information within China. While Redfield was talking to Gao on one of the phones, Wuhan’s local police were one of a series of Chinese medical experts who tried to warn about the dangers of new pneumonia-like viruses in China. “Rumor story” that summoned a human doctor, Li Wenliang, and accused him
Lee died after being infected with COVID-19 on February 7. On the same day, Hazard reiterated that Washington was ready to provide assistance in the field.
The US CDC did not have direct access to data from China. More COVID-19 cases have begun to appear in the United States. No US experts were invited to the WHO team, which arrived in China on February 10 of that year.
WHO’s investigation into the origin of the virus was finally conducted a year later, under international pressure and close supervision of Chinese researchers. Two US scientists attended, including Clifford Lane, Deputy Director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. This is the first time a government-affiliated US scientist has been admitted to China since the COIVD-19 pandemic.
By that time, traces of all the viruses had long been destroyed at Wuhan’s South China Seafood Market. This site links to the first incident identified by the authorities. The WHO panel was similarly denied access to raw data in early cases.
follow
follow
Zachary Stieber covers US and world news. He is based in Maryland.