Republicans on the House Oversight Committee announced the escalation of their investigation into the Chinese government’s influence on the World Health Organization during the coronavirus outbreak, demanding the group hand over its internal communications with Beijing.
“The World Health Organization is at the center of the global response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the WHO’s purported mission to operate as an apolitical international institution within the United Nations, recent media reports suggest that the WHO helped Beijing disseminate propaganda, downplayed the extent of the disease, and possibly delayed ordering a public health emergency,” Republicans wrote to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Given the actions and statements of WHO officials during the past few months, we are concerned that the WHO is no longer serving the needs of the world and is instead taking its cues from China.”
The GOP lawmakers asked the WHO to hand over a trove of internal communications “to help us and the public understand the WHO’s efforts to combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its relationship with the Chinese government.”
The Republicans told the WHO to provide them with all discussions and records regarding the total number of those infected by and those who have died from COVID-19 during the pandemic in China, including those who were infected but asymptomatic. The U.S. intelligence community believes China has consistently misled about the outbreak.
The GOP members also asked the WHO to turn over all documents and communications related to public health, including but not limited to COVID-19, between the WHO and China from August 2019 through the present. The congressmen also pressed the WHO to hand over similar records related to Taiwan.
Rep. Jim Jordan, the ranking member on the Democrat-led committee, said the WHO “should be ashamed that they relied on Chinese propaganda when deciding how to combat the coronavirus crisis” and that “President Trump is right to question the WHO’s role in global health going forward.” The letter was signed by 13 other members.
“Throughout the crisis, the WHO has shied away from placing any blame on the Chinese government, which is in essence the Communist Party of China,” they told Tedros. “You, as leader of the WHO, even went so far as to praise the Chinese government’s ‘transparency’ during the crisis, when, in fact, the regime has consistently lied to the world by underreporting their actual infection and death statistics.”
The letter claimed the WHO initially denied human-to-human spread of COVID-19 “based solely on Chinese propaganda.” Reports show Chinese doctors knew in about late December and early January that human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus was almost certainly occurring and that the Chinese government silenced medical professionals who attempted to go public. Yet, the WHO tweeted on Jan. 14 that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.”
Taiwan claimed it warned the WHO about the contagious threat posed by the coronavirus back in December but that its warnings went unheeded. WHO senior adviser Bruce Aylward, who has lavished praise on China’s response, got the WHO bad publicity when he refused to answer questions about Taiwan.
The congressmen also said the WHO ”prolonged” the process of naming COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern and a pandemic because of China’s false claims about having it under control. By the time the WHO declared COVID-19 a concern on Jan. 30, the disease had gone global, infecting more than 10,000 people and killing almost 1,000 in 10 different countries. Lawmakers suggested the WHO’s delay “was a result of intense pressure from China” and pointed out that, even when making the declaration, Tedros said, “China is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken to contain the outbreak.”
The WHO concluded COVID-19 first appeared in China, and an investigative report found “early cases identified in Wuhan are believed to have acquired infection from a zoonotic source” in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.
The GOP letter also knocked the WHO for “delayed serious measures, such as travel restrictions, to counter the global spread,” as well as “continued praise of the Chinese efforts to combat the crisis, despite the cover-up.”
Tedros has praised China’s response repeatedly, including after a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in January.
There is well-documented evidence that China tried to cover up the coronavirus spread, muzzled whistleblowers, misled the WHO, and attempted to block outside health experts. At least one study indicated that if the Chinese government had acted more quickly, the coronavirus’s global spread would have been greatly reduced.
Tedros has been criticized for his friendliness toward China, and the WHO repeatedly opposed any countries imposing travel restrictions against China. He argued in late January that “there is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade.” But the Trump administration ignored his stance and placed limitations on travel to and from China at the end of January. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, credited this move with helping slow the spread of COVID-19 in the United States.
The WHO was still arguing against travel bans at the end of February, saying, “WHO continues to advise against the application of travel or trade restrictions to countries experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks.”
Trump, who has said the WHO “really blew it” and seems “very China-centric,” has brought up the prospect of freezing funds to the organization.
“Please don’t politicize this virus,” Tedros said in response. “If you don’t want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it.”
The WHO has a $4.8 billion budget, to which the U.S. is the largest contributor. In its fiscal 2021 budget proposal, the Trump administration seeks to reduce the amount Congress delegated to the agency in 2020, about $111 million, to about $58 million. The U.S. also voluntarily gives between $100 million and $400 million more each year to the WHO for specific projects.
“It is essential that American taxpayers’ money is allocated to organizations that uniformly serve the interests of nations across the globe, not merely the interests of China’s authoritarian, communist regime,” the Republicans said.
