New report claims coronavirus outbreak could have been reduced by 95 percent if China acted sooner

President Trump says the world is paying the price for China’s cover-up; reaction on ‘The Five.’

In this 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 earlier this month. (Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via AP)

CHINA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH WHO CHIEF IN WAKE OF CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

The resolution argues that the Chinese government «made multiple, serious mistakes in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak that heightened the severity and spread of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which include the Chinese government’s intentional spread of misinformation to downplay the risks fo the virus, a refusal to cooperate with international health authorities, internal censorship of doctors and journalists and malicious disregard for the health of ethnic minorities.»

Specifically, the resolution suggests that China was aware of a novel coronavirus strain in mid-December, with multiple doctors raising the alarm among the Chinese medical community before the new year. But, the resolution says, Chinese authorities muzzled those doctors, including on Jan. 3 forcing one to «sign a letter confessing that he had made ‘false comments’ that ‘severely disturbed the social order.'»

The largely Republican group of representatives also condemns China for its treatment of the Uighur Muslims, a religious minority from which U.S. government officials believe China has rounded up between 800,000 and 2 million people, placing them in reeducation camps that function largely as forced labor camps.

CHINA REFRAMES CORONAVIRUS NARRATIVE, TOUTS XI’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS DESPITE BODIES PILING UP

They condemn «the detention of over 1,000,000 [Uighur] Muslims and other ethnic minorities in ‘re-education camps’, whose crowded and unsanitary conditions makes the camps hotspots for viral disease and leave prisoners at an elevated risk of contracting COVID-19.»

Finally, the resolution lays out the Chinese government’s propaganda campaign to paper over its responsibility for the rapid spread of the coronavirus, specifically mentioning its lack of cooperation with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a foreign ministry spokesman who «claimed that COVID-19 originated in the United States and that the United States army brought the virus to Wuhan to wage biological warfare» on China; and China’s move to expel journalists with the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and New York Times.

The move to expel journalists caught the attention of the highest levels of the U.S. government last week, with the National Security Council responding with harsh words and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is not a co-sponsor of the Banks resolution, rebuking the Chinese government.

«This brazen assault on the free press by the Chinese Communist Party is appalling,» Schiff tweeted March 17. «That it occurred in the midst of a public health crisis, when the flow of unbiased information to the public is critical, is also dangerous. China’s attempts to silence the truth must not stand.»