Leaked ‘The Wuhan File’, Reveals China’s Mistakes at the Beginning of the Pandemic

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – A secret document leaked about how China handled the corona (Covid-19) in the early days of the pandemic.

The report, labeled ‘internal document’, states how the published data was ‘semerawut’ signaling the chaos of the calculation system in the early weeks of the pandemic.

The document itself is 117 pages, as published by CNN International. The document contains data, although incomplete, from October 2019 to April 2020.

This exposes how inflexible the top-down bureaucratic system and emergency crisis procedures are. One of the points noted is how slow the local government is in diagnosing Covid-19 patients.

In written documents, the average treatment time from symptom onset to diagnosis was 23.3 days. Even though the Hubei authority presented that it had carried out an efficient and transparent handling of the outbreak to the public.

Not only that, the number of cases that were reported to the public and listed in the reports was different. For example, on February 10, China announced there were 2,478 cases even though in the document there were a total of 5,918 cases detected, or double the number announced in the public.

There was no immediate comment from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Chinese Health Committee on this.

Previously, the United States and a number of countries such as Australia had indeed demanded China’s transparency about the corona at the beginning of the pandemic. Yet China is defending its handling of the outbreak.

In a June 7 press conference in China published the White Paper. There Beijing claims to have published information related to corona in a timely, open and transparent manner.

“While doing its utmost to contain the virus, China has also acted with a high sense of responsibility towards humanity, its people, its descendants and the international community, and has provided information about Covid-19 in a professional and efficient manner,” the book wrote.

“(China) has released authoritative and detailed information as early as possible on a regular basis, thereby effectively responding to public concerns and building public consensus.”

Meanwhile, health experts say the document explains why what China knew in the early months of the pandemic was important.

“Obviously they made mistakes, and it’s not just mistakes that happen when you deal with the new virus, also bureaucratic and politically motivated mistakes in how they handle it,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“This has global consequences. You can never guarantee 100% transparency. It is not just about deliberate concealment, you are also limited by technology and other problems with new viruses. But even if they are 100% transparent, that will not stop the Trump administration from belittling it. This is probably not going to stop this development from turning into a pandemic.

Meanwhile, citing a Lancet media document, at the same time as December 1, 2019, when the coronavirus was believed to have emerged, documents indicated another health crisis was taking place in Hubei. The province is facing a significant influenza outbreak.

The influenza epidemic, as officials noted in the document, not only occurred in Wuhan in December, but was largest in the neighboring cities of Yichang and Xianning. It remains unclear what impact or link the influenza surge will have on the Covid-19 outbreak.

There is no suggestion in the document that the two parallel crises are related. Information about the magnitude of the influenza surge in Hubei is still not published.

(Head / head)

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