The World Health Organization (WHO) quietly updated a timeline this week to reflect that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) never reported its discovery of the coronavirus to the WHO and that the global health agency had to find out on its own, despite the high praise it had given to Chinese transparency.
An old WHO virus timeline, published on its website, said:
“31 Dec 2019: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A new coronavirus was eventually identified.“
A note on the old timeline now says: “This statement is no longer maintained. An updated version was published on June 29, 2020.”
The updated WHO timeline reflects that the WHO’s own China office found open-source reports about the coronavirus and alerted the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office, and that on January 1, the WHO requested information from Chinese authorities. It states:
“31 December 2019: The WHO Country Office in the People’s Republic of China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China.
The Country Office notified the International Health Regulations (IHR) focal point at the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office about the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission media statement on the cases and provided a translation of it.
WHO’s Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources platform (EIOS) also picked up a media report on ProMED (a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases) about the same cluster of ‘pneumonia of unknown cause’ in Wuhan.
Multiple health authorities around the world reached out to WHO for additional information.”
“1 January 2020: WHO requested information from Chinese authorities on the atypical pneumonia cluster reported in Wuhan.
WHO activated its Incident Management Support Team (IMST), as part of its emergency response framework, which ensures coordination of activities and response at all three levels of WHO (Headquarters, Regional, Country) for public health emergencies.”
The update came after Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) released an interim report on their investigation of China’s response after it discovered coronavirus cases in Wuhan.
The Republican investigation found that China never notified the WHO about the coronavirus outbreak.
The investigation found that on December 31, 2019, Chinese media reports about the virus began to appear on the Internet, including on the U.S.-based early-warning platform for infectious disease outbreaks. WHO Executive Director Dr. Michael Ryan admitted that he learned about the coronavirus outbreak from the platform.
Instead of being transparent, the CCP began covering up the outbreak by censoring references to the virus on the Internet and on messaging platforms.
The WHO update is significant because most Western media outlets have reported that China informed the WHO about the outbreak, as the WHO had implied in its earlier timeline. The WHO never corrected those media reports.
Meanwhile, China has also quietly dropped its claims that it informed the WHO about the virus.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian admitted at a press conference on June 24, 2020: “On January 3, China began sending regular updates to the WHO as well as to other countries and regions, including the U.S.”
HFAC Republican leader and China Task Force chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said in a statement:
“I’m glad to see that the WHO and the Chinese Communist Party have read my interim report on the origins of the pandemic and are finally admitting the truth to the world: the CCP never reported the virus outbreak to the WHO in violation of WHO rules. The question now is whether the CCP will continue its false propaganda campaign that keeps claiming it warned the world, or whether it will come clean and begin working with the global health community to get to the bottom of this deadly pandemic.”
HFAC Republicans are continuing their investigation into China and the WHO’s handling of the virus, and plan to release a full report later this year.
Democrats, who are trying to blame President Trump for the coronavirus during an election year, did not participate in the investigation for fear that it would shift blame away from Trump.
Source: Breitbart
