WASHINGTON, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Accusations on China's supposed early COVID-19 related failings are mostly misplaced, said a recent think tank report.
"There were no major shortcomings on China's part in alerting the U.S. and the international public health community," said a report by Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies.
The report indicated that there was no three-week delay in movement at the Chinese end. On the contrary, authorities were laser-focused on investigating, isolating, and detecting the early spread of COVID-19.
"To those who argue that the country sat on its hands during the early days of the outbreak, the frenetic pace of China's early response utterly belies their claim," said the report.
The report said that Taiwan did not alert the World Health Organization (WHO) to evidence of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 on Dec. 31, 2019.
"What Taiwan did convey to the WHO on December 31st contained information that was no more useful than what the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission had, in fact, already publicly announced by that date."
The report noted that a once-in-100-year pandemic event does not lend itself to predictable management and simple solutions, and the United States and international community bear an obligation to reckon honestly with the facts of China's early coronavirus response.
"The early 'fog of war' notwithstanding, the integrity of the Chinese authorities' initial response and successes, particularly in terms of isolating the causative virus and establishing diagnostic tools, overwhelmingly outweigh the failings," said the report.
As COVID-19 deaths continue to increase in the United States, some individuals in the Trump administration have tried desperately to deflect criticisms about their blunders by blaming China.
The coronavirus has infected more than 1.35 million people in the United States, with more than 80,000 deaths, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University. Enditem
