China Concealed Extent of Virus Outbreak, U.S. Intelligence Says

China Concealed Extent of Virus Outbreak, U.S. Intelligence Says




Nick Wadhams and Jennifer Jacobs
37 mins ago










(Bloomberg) -- China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.
Bloomberg Airport employees wear full body protective suits at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai on March 28.
The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret, and they declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.



The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials said.

The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University . That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.

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Trump said Wednesday that China’s reported virus data appear to be on the “light side” but that he hadn’t received an intelligence report saying the country had concealed the extent of its outbreak.




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“Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side, and I’m being nice when I say that,” he said at a daily coronavirus briefing at the White House.

Trump added that the U.S. and China were in constant communication and that Beijing would spend $250 billion to purchase American products. “We’d like to keep it, they’d like to keep it” he said of the U.S.-China trade deal.

Communications staff at the White House and the Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

‘More Forthcoming’

“The reality is that we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming,” Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday on CNN. “What appears evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China.

While China eventually imposed a strict lockdown beyond those of less autocratic nations, there has been considerable skepticism toward China’s reported numbers, both outside and within the country. The Chinese government has repeatedly revised its methodology for counting cases, for weeks excluding people without symptoms entirely, and only on Tuesday added more than 1,500 asymptomatic cases to its total.

Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have driven public doubt in Beijing’s reporting.

Republican lawmakers in the U.S. have been particularly harsh about China’s role in the outbreak. Enhancing Beijing’s role in the pandemic could be politically helpful to President Donald Trump, who has sought to shift blame for the U.S. outbreak away from his administration’s delays in achieving widespread testing for the virus and mobilizing greater production of supplies such as face masks and hospital ventilators.





“The claim that the United States has more coronavirus deaths than China is false,” Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, said in a statement after Bloomberg News published its report. “Without commenting on any classified information, this much is painfully obvious: The Chinese Communist Party has lied, is lying, and will continue to lie about coronavirus to protect the regime.”

Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House on its response to the outbreak, said Tuesday that China’s public reporting influenced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus.

Read More: Drugs Trump Touted for Covid-19 Treatment Added to Shortage List

“The medical community made -- interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” she said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.”

Suspect Reporting

The U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion is an attempt to divert attention from surging deaths in the U.S. and other Western countries, Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of China’s state-run Global Times, said on his account on Chinese social media platform Weibo.

There was no way for serious data faking to occur in today’s China, especially for an incident that has drawn such widespread attention, Hu said. He said China managed to curtail the death toll in Hubei, the province where the virus first emerged late last year, by sending medical workers and equipment there from other parts of the country.

“To fake the casualty data, which departments will be deployed? Who will implement the plan?,” Hu said. “It will involve many different departments in many places to get the total numbers. If one of them is faking once, they have to fake it all the time. The risk of screwing up could be very high.”

China isn’t the only country with suspect public reporting. Western officials have pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia and especially North Korea, which has not reported a single case of the disease, as probable under-counts. Others including Saudi Arabia and Egypt may also be playing down their numbers.

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The world is battling the COVID-19 outbreak that the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic.
(Pictured) Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, England as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, on April 1.

2/50 SLIDES  Dean Lewins/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock


A woman jogs over the Sydney Harbour Bridge at sunrise in Australia on April 2 amid government's strict social distancing and socialization measures as they try to contain the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic. 

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President Donald Trump addresses the daily coronavirus response briefing as National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, Attorney General William Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley listen at the White House in Washington, on April 1.

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A woman, wearing a protective face mask as a precaution against the new coronavirus, rides in a public cable car in Bogota, Colombia, on April 1, during a countrywide lockdown as it seeks to prevent the spread of the COVID-19.

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Medical staff, wearing protective suits and face masks, work at the intensive care unit for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients at Ambroise Pare clinic in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris, as the spread of the coronavirus disease continues in France, on April 1.

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Closed playgrounds are seen as local precautionary measures are implemented to slow down the spread of Covid-19 in Stamford, Connecticut on April 1.

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A vendor prepares a stall in a market at Tepito neighborhood after Mexico's government declared a health emergency and issued stricter rules to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Mexico City, on April 1.

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A man takes a picture near a cherry blossom trees street, closed to avoid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Seoul, South Korea, April 1, 2020.

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Members of the Michigan National Guard set up hospital beds as the Detroit TCF convention center is converted into a field hospital amid an outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Detroit, Michigan,on April 1.

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Members of local hygiene services wear a protective suit and face masks, as they disinfect a health centre to stop the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Dakar, Senegal on April 1.

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Well-wishers and friends gather on the street outside the home of former U.S. Marine nurse Ruth Gallivan to help celebrate her 104th birthday during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in San Diego, California,on April 1.

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A specialist wearing protective gear sprays disinfectant on a street installation in Stavropol, Russia on April 1.

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People stand on lines drawn to maintain safe distance as they wait to receive free food being distributed by Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) during a 21-day nationwide lockdown in Chennai, India on April 1.

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A municipality worker in a protective suit sprays a disinfectant along the Vltava river in Prague, Czech Republic on April 1.

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People visit the Big Buddha in Kotoku-in Temple of Kamakura, near Tokyo, Japan on April 1.

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A view of one of the main pedestrian streets closed to public access in the center of Mexico City, Mexico on April 1, 2020.

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The Eleftherios Venizelos passenger ship is anchored after authorities found 20 coronavirus cases onboard and placed the ship under quarantine near the island of Salamina, Greece on April 1, 2020.

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Rainbow messages of support and thanks are seen attached to school railings at Isleworth Town school in London, England on April 1.

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Workers wearing protective suits pray before a disinfection operation, during the movement control order due to the outbreak of the coronavirus in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on April 1.

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Workers stitches protective face masks used to curb the spread of the coronavirus at a former clothing factory in Kabul, Afghanistan on April 1.

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Workers use sewing machines to manufacture protective suits at a garment factory during the lockdown imposed by the government amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus in Dhaka, Bangladesh on March 31.

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Mountain goats roam the streets of LLandudno on March 31 in Wales. The goats normally live on the rocky Great Orme but are occasional visitors to the seaside town, but a local Councillor told the BBC that the herd was drawn this time by the lack of people and tourists due to the COVID-19 outbreak and quarantine measures.

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Palestinian artist Ameer Abu Ghalioon plays music dressed as a clown under the windows of Palestinian families keeping the confinement in the divided West bank town of Hebron on March 31, during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

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Flowers hang at the entrance to a residence home for the elderly where some residents died of COVID-19 in Madrid, Spain, on March 31.

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A police officer wearing a protective mask walks across Red Square, after the city authorities announced a partial lockdown ordering residents to stay at home to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease during snowfall in Moscow, Russia on March 31.

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Neighbors line up for free food staples outside Santa Ana primary school in Asuncion, Paraguay, on March 31, as part of an already existing food program through the Education Ministry, as people stay home from work amid the spread of the new coronavirus. 

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Crew members are seen as the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship enters the harbor where South African crew members are to alight after having tested negative for the coronavirus diseasein Durban, South Africa on March 31.

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A yard sign reminds neighbors about good social distancing practices on March 31, in Lakewood, Colorado.

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A woman takes photographs of the Tokyo Olympic Games countdown clock, which has been restarted in front of the JR Tokyo Station on March 31 in Tokyo, Japan. The Tokyo Olympic Games will be held between July 23 to August 8 in 2021 while the Paralympic Games will be between August 24 and September 5.

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A field hospital is set up by Rio de Janeiro state government next to the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on March 31.

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Fitness coach Sebastien Manko gives a lesson from the street to elderly people attending from the balconies of their retirement home in Bordeaux, France on March 31, as the country is under lockdown.

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People stand on circles marked on the ground to maintain social distancing as they wait to collect a free dry ration from the Saylani Welfare Trust during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown in Quetta, Pakistan on March 31.

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Health officials spray disinfectant in a Kampung Baru, traditional Malay village, in Kuala Lumpur city center as a safety precaution against the new coronavirus, on March 31. The Malaysian government issued a restricted movement order to the public for the rest of the month to help curb the spread of the virus.

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People wearing face masks are practicing social distancing as they wait outside a Postal Savings Bank of China branch on March 31 in Wuhan, Hubei province, the epicenter of China's coronavirus outbreak.

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Residents, wearing face masks as a preventive measure against the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, practise social distancing as they wait to be tested at a makeshift rapid testing centre near the Bach Mai hospital in Hanoi on March 31.

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A policeman gestures as men wearing protective facemasks walk to board a special service bus taking them to a quarantine facility amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus in the Nizamuddin area of New Delhi on March 31.

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The pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the Giza pyramid complex, is illuminated with text encouraging to stay home, as Egypt ramps up its efforts to slow down the spread of coronavirus  (COVID-19) outbreak, in Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, on March 30.

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A municipal worker wearing protective gear sprays disinfectant on a Public Health Inspector during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 in Colombo on March 31. 

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Police officers wearing face masks guard the rear entrance of the Urban Newtown hotel where quarantined Australian travelers who have landed back into Sydney will remain for 14 days on March 31 in Sydney, Australia. Public gatherings are now limited to two people, as the Australian Government introduces tougher restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday told Australians to stay home unless they are shopping for food, receiving medical attention, going to work or education, or for exercise, which is now limited to groups of two. People over 70 have been told to remain inside while public areas such as playgrounds, outside gyms and skateparks will be closed from midday on Monday. International arrivals into Australia are being quarantined in hotels on arrival. 

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Navy Hospital Ship USNS Comfort travels under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge as it heads to Pier 90 as the coronavirus pandemic continues to overwhelm medical infrastructure on March 30 seen from Bayridge, Brooklyn In New York City. Docked at Pier 90 on the West Side of Manhattan the hospital ship will provide another thousand beds for non-COVID-19 patients. 

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(Pictured) A man walks his dog past graffiti calling for people to wash their hands to combat the spread of the coronavirus, in Belfast, Northern Ireland on March, 30.

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Residents watch from their balconies South African police and National Defense Forces search a local bar they thought was illegally open in downtown Johannesburg on March 30.

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Hundreds of people sit in their cars watching a movie trailer at a drive-in cinema, as all other theaters are closed due to the coronavirus in Essen, Germany on March 30.

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Israeli police arrest an Ultra Orthodox Jew during protest against government's measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus in the orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem on March 30.

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Two police officers patrol an unusually empty Red Square in Moscow, Russia on March 30.

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Workers set up a temporary field hospital to treat patients who have COVID-19 inside Pacaembu stadium in Sao Paulo, Brazil on March 30.

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A man walks past on a nearly empty street in snowfall during the first weekend after Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike urged Tokyo residents to stay indoors in a bid to keep the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) from spreading, at Ameyoko shopping and amusement district in Tokyo, Japan on March 29.

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Read More: Mapping the Outbreak Across the World

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has publicly urged China and other nations to be transparent about their outbreaks. He has repeatedly accused China of covering up the extent of the problem and being slow to share information, especially in the weeks after the virus first emerged, and blocking offers of help from American experts.

“This data set matters,” he said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. The development of medical therapies and public-health measures to combat the virus “so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired,” he said.

“I would urge every nation: Do your best to collect the data. Do your best to share that information,” he said. “We’re doing that.”

(Updates with Trump comments from fifth paragraph)

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