House Republicans demanded the Democratic-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis to call the chief of the World Health Organization and China’s ambassador to testify in an effort to hold them “accountable” for their response to the outbreak.
The seven-page letter sent to Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, the chairman of the specialized group within the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was signed by five Republicans: ranking member Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri, Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana, and Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee.
The stated goals of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis focus mainly on examining the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, but Republicans say Congress also needs to investigate the Chinese Communist Party and the WHO.
“Republicans in the House of Representatives have repeatedly attempted to work with our Democrat colleagues to hold China accountable for causing this pandemic as well as hold the World Health Organization accountable for condoning China’s actions. We will continue to do both,” the GOP letter said. “We urge you to immediately join our investigation and hold hearings to determine why the Chinese government denied and downplayed the severity of the COVID-19 outbreak, and how China is now attempting to exploit the pandemic it caused … Congress must work to understand the origins of COVID-19 and reform the WHO.”
The GOP congressmen pointed to three main areas to investigate: China’s “obfuscation of the origin” of COVID-19; China’s “manipulation of the WHO” to cover up the severity of the outbreak; and recent reports that the Chinese government is “disrupting the medical supply chain” and “stealing American medical research” in an effort to “exploit the pandemic.” They argued that getting answers to “these imperative questions” would help with limiting “ongoing and future harm from Chinese malfeasance.”
The Republicans also said the subcommittee should “immediately” call WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai to testify before House lawmakers.
Earlier on Tuesday, the WHO’s member nations unanimously approved a resolution calling on Tedros to “initiate, at the earliest appropriate moment, and in consultation with Member States, a stepwise process of impartial, independent, and comprehensive evaluation … to review experience gained and lessons learned from the WHO-coordinated international health response to COVID-19.” The resolution also called for an investigation of “the actions of WHO and their timelines pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
There is evidence that China covered up the coronavirus’s spread, muzzled whistleblowers, intimidated doctors, misled the WHO, and blocked outside health experts. Studies indicated that if China had acted faster, the global spread would’ve been greatly reduced. It was reported that China knew around late December that human-to-human transmission was occurring, but on Jan. 14, the WHO tweeted that “Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” Tedros and the WHO have repeatedly praised China’s coronavirus response.
“The Chinese government’s efforts to undermine the American effort to combat COVID19 and sabotage the global economic recovery are ongoing,” the GOP House lawmakers said Tuesday. “We urge the Subcommittee to return to the Capitol and help us hold the Chinese government accountable for its cynical strategy to exploit a pandemic of its own making.”
The GOP letter comes the day after President Trump released a letter to Tedros, which noted his organization’s “alarming lack of independence from the People’s Republic of China,” threatening a “permanent” halt of U.S. funding to the WHO unless “substantive changes” are made within 30 days.
Last month it was reported the U.S. Intelligence Community believed the Chinese Communist Party downplayed the severity of the initial coronavirus outbreak and that China continued to mislead about the infection rate and death toll inside the country. Beijing has denied orchestrating a cover-up of its coronavirus response.
