US Defence Secretary Says China Still Withholding Data on COVID-19
16:01 GMT 15.04.2020(updated 16:29 GMT 15.04.2020)
On 14 April, US President Donald Trump ordered the move against the WHO, charging that the UN agency had accepted China's claims in January that the virus was not contagious and delayed declaring an emergency until the end of the month.
China is still holding back information linked to the coronavirus that is needed to inform the global response, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said in an interview.
"Clearly, the Chinese could have been more transparent earlier and shared much more of the data. We would have (had) a better understanding of this virus and then how to deal with it. Even today we see them withholding information and so I think we need to do more and continue to press them to share", Esper said in an interview with Fox News.
The statement comes after US President Donald Trump announced a day earlier that he had instructed his administration to stop US funding for the WHO, which he accused of grossly mismanaging and covering up the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Much of the anger directed at the international health body stems from a WHO tweet in January 2020 claiming that Chinese scientists had found no evidence that the coronavirus can be transmitted from human to human.
On 11 March, the World Health Organisation declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. The total number of COVID-19 cases worldwide has surpassed 1.9 million and the death toll has topped 123,000, according to WHO data.
© Sputnik
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