Intelligence suggests China withheld data from the WHO in order to hoard medical supplies

A Department of Homeland Security Intelligence report from May 1 says that leaders in China “intentionally concealed the severity” of the outbreak at the beginning of January, reports AP News.

This follows an amplified criticism of the communist nation from the Trump administration, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that China is responsible for how the virus spread and the country should be held accountable.

While President Trump's opponents say that he is only trying to divert attention from criticism of his own response to the pandemic, Trump's administration continues to investigate the origins of the virus and China's response to it. And the analysis shows that China began importing vast quantities of PPE and medical supplies from other nations, just as they downplayed or obfuscated the impact of the virus within their borders.

“Intelligence has just reported to me that I was correct, and that they did NOT bring up the CoronaVirus subject matter until late into January, just prior to my banning China from the U.S.,” Trump tweeted. “Also, they only spoke of the Virus in a very non-threatening, or matter of fact, manner.”

Previously, Trump raised theories about the virus possibly spreading as a result of a horrible “mistake.”

The analysis from the DHS shows that China began bringing in more medical supplies and reducing exports. The analysis says the country began, “denying there were export restrictions and obfuscating and delaying provision of its trade data.”

The report adds that China held off on letting the World Health Organization know the virus “was a contagion” in order to bring medical supplies into the country. The number of PPE being imported to the country began to increase rapidly.

The report adds that the conclusions come from a 95 percent probability that the country’s import and export activity was not its usual.

The WHO received notice about the outbreak from China on December 31 and the US Centers for Disease Control was contacted on January 3.

Doctors who attempted to warn about the outbreak were silenced, though many of the wrong turns by the government seem to be because of bureaucratic hurdles and officials who did not want to report the bad news.

Mike Pompeo noted when speaking with ABC on Sunday that he did not believe the virus was introduced on purpose. He then added, “Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories.”

“These are not the first times that we’ve had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab,” Pompeo said. “And so, while the intelligence community continues to do its work, they should continue to do that, and verify so that we are certain, I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.”

Geng Shuang, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, said on Friday, “The US government has ignored the facts, diverted public attention and engaged in buck-passing in an attempt to shirk its responsibility for incompetence in the fight against the epidemic."

Beijing has shut down US accusations, saying that American officials made many mistakes while preparing for and fighting against the outbreak, and diverting attention from their own culpability by trying to place the blame on the US.