China’s understanding of the virus was far advanced from the impression given by its public stance
China filed a patent for a drug seen as one of the best potential weapons against coronavirus the day after it confirmed human transmission of the disease.
The revelation that it moved so fast fuels concerns about a cover-up of the pandemic when it erupted in Wuhan last year, and suggests that China’s understanding of the virus was far advanced from the impression given by its public stance.
Last night, Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, joined the growing global clamour for a full, independent inquiry into China’s role.
‘It is quite clear there is an awful lot that we don’t know about the emergence of this disease and the responses to it,’ he said. ‘We all need to learn the lessons of the outbreak so the international community can respond better in the future.’
Full 4/22/2020 press conference in Bakersfield California with Doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi
China’s Communist Party leaders face accusations that they suppressed data, blocked public health teams from investigating, silenced doctors seeking to warn the world about the epidemic and delayed admitting there was human transmission.
The contagious nature of the virus was confirmed by President Xi Jinping on January 20. Leaked documents have shown that even after officials knew they faced an epidemic, they delayed warning the public for six days.
On January 21, a patent for commercial use of Remdesivir – a drug initially created by an American pharmaceutical firm to fight ebola – was filed in China.
The application was made by Wuhan Institute of Virology, the top-secret bio-laboratory at the centre of concerns about a possible leak of the disease from its research on bats, and the country’s Military Medicine Institute.
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