Chinese Embassy refutes media charges of its culpability in Covid-19 spread

April 3, 2020

New Delhi: Condemning a section of the media for accusing China of concealing the real situation of Covid-19 which led to its spread to the world, The Chinese Embassy said here on Friday that it was not the time for blame game but fighting the war againt corona unitedly.

The embassy statement comes amidst a plethora of various conspiracy theories in circulation in the media regarding alleged culpability of China in the spread of the deadly virus.

”Faced with the pandemic, the destinies of all countries are closely intertwined. It would only waste more valuable time by slandering others or shifting the blame. We should discard the differences of ideology and social system, take full account of humanitarian spirit, devote our time and energy in fighting against the pandemic and saving lives, so as to defeat the pandemic as soon as ,” Embassy Spokesperson Ji Rong said here in a statement.

He said his country was ready to further international cooperation in fighting the pandemic and sharing experiences with other countries.

The coronavirus is a novel virus unseen in the past, its detection, research, testing and confirmation naturally requires time, he said, underlining that the timeline of China’s response is very clear: On December 27, 2019, a doctor in Hubei province reported the first three suspected cases. On December 29, related centers for disease control and prevention and hospitals in Hubei province and Wuhan city carried out epidemiological investigation. On December 30, Wuhan Municipal Health Committee issued an “urgent notice on the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause”. On December 31, the National Health Commission sent an expert group to Wuhan to investigate on site. On January 3, 2020, China started to send timely updates to the World Health Organization and other countries. On January 11, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention uploaded five whole genome sequences of the novel coronavirus on website and shared data with the world and WHO. On January 23, Wuhan was put under lockdown and unprecedented comprehensive, thorough and rigorous measures were adopted.

He pointed out that WHO had admitted that China had taken the most courageous, most flexible and most active prevention and control measures, which altered the dangerous course of the virus’ quick spread and prevented hundreds of thousands of infections nationwide.

”The authoritative journal Science published a paper by researchers in the United States, the UK and other countries saying that China’s control measures worked by successfully breaking the chain of transmission and bought other countries valuable time, without the Wuhan travel ban and the national emergency response by the Chinese Government, there would have been more than 700,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases outside of Wuhan by February 19. The Lancet’s editor recently also said on BBC that “the message from China is very clear…we wasted February when we could have acted”, Ji said.

China stands ready to further international cooperation in fighting the pandemic and sharing experiences with other countries. We should join hands and work together to defeat the virus as soon as possible and safeguard regional and global public health security, the Spokesperson said.

–India News Stream