(Minghui.org) More than 720,480 people in 199 countries and regions have tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus as of March 29, 2020. Excluding China and Iran, whose official tallies are widely deemed underreported, the U.S. has the most infection cases, followed by Italy, Spain and Germany.
Among the hardest-hit countries, Italy has the highest death rate of 11% (10,779 deaths out of 97,689 infection cases).
While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has claimed victory in its battle against the virus, government officials in Western countries have become increasingly vocal in criticizing the CCP's systematic misinformation campaign to shift the blame and whitewash what had happened.
During a press conference on March 25 after a virtual meeting with the Group of Seven (G-7) countries, Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, said, “The Chinese Communist Party poses substantial threat to our health, way of life, as the Wuhan virus outbreak clearly has demonstrated. The CCP also threatens to undermine the free and open order that has underpinned our mutual prosperity and safety in the G7 countries. I urged every one of the countries to work together to protect the UN and other organization from its malign influence and authoritarianism. We G7 countries must promote our shared values of freedom, sovereignty, good governance, transparency, accountability and push the UN to uphold these principles as well.”
“At the beginning of this, when it was clear that this was an issue, China knew about it. They were the first country to know about the risk to the world from this virus and they repeatedly delayed sharing that information with the globe. We desperately want to work with every country around the world. This is a global pandemic. This is something the United States wants to work on with every country, including China, to figure out how to resolve to keep as many people alive, as many people healthy, and then to restore our economies that have been decimated by the Wuhan virus.”
He also said that right now it’s not the time for “recriminations and accountability.” But “there will be a right time after we’ve managed to address this crisis, after we’ve managed to get the economies back on their feet, there will be a time for the world to evaluate responsibility for what took place.”
On March 24, House Reps. Jim Banks and Seth Moulton introduced a resolution condemning the CCP's mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak.
The bipartisan resolution accuses the CCP authorities of censoring doctors for exposing coronavirus information and tamping down on efforts by scientists to study the disease early on. It also cited a study by researchers from the University of Southampton, who predicted that if China had taken actions three weeks earlier, the spread of coronavirus would have been reduced by 95 percent globally.
On the same day, Sen. Josh Hawley also introduced a resolution that details how the CCP covered up information about the virus that eventually evolved into a pandemic. He called for an “international investigation” into the CCP’s handling of the epidemic and demands the CCP compensate the world “for the harm caused by its decision to hide the emergence and spread of COVID–19 during the initial weeks of the outbreak.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik introduced a similar resolution in the House.
Sen. Hawley told Fox News that the U.S. government had offered to send medical teams and scientists to China in order to assist their response to the epidemic. “China said no ... they have been lying about it and sitting on it for weeks and weeks and weeks and that has cost the world thousands of deaths, it's cost us here in this country,” Sen. Hawley said.
In response to surging cases in Italy, one outspoken senator and also former Minister of Communications, Maurizio Gasparri, published a video online on March 17, in which he criticized the CCP for lying about the coronavirus and also described the communist regime as “a tumor on the planet.”
Mr. Gasparri said the CCP “has never told the truth about the coronavirus from the very beginning. It is a country that deliberately delayed and gave false information under the leadership of the Communist Party dictatorship. This China is like a tumor on the planet. We really have to face it bravely by using economic and financial methods. European countries have to wake up from what happened in Italy. Never, ever be deceived by the CCP’s lies. The current China under the CCP is not a resource to the world, but just a danger!”
Mr. Gasparri also noted that while the CCP is bragging about its “donation” of 30 tons of medical supplies to Italy, Italy actually had to pay for it.
As very few new cases are being reported in China now, Taro Aso, Japanese Deputy Prime Minister and also Finance Minister, said such data “cannot be trusted.”
Aso told Japan’s Upper House Finance Committee: “The current situation began in China. It is better not to trust the numbers coming out of the country where it all began.”
He also commented on a petition calling for the head of the World Health Organization to resign over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He said that many people worry that the WHO is, in fact, the “Chinese Health Organization,” a reference to its close relationship with China and its willingness to accept coronavirus figures from Chinese authorities without investigating them.