A report marked "internal document, please keep confidential," consisting of 117 pages of leaked documents from the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China, was recently leaked to CNN. The documents, which were verified by CNN, show how the country mishandled the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic by misleading public data and three-week delays in test results.
As CNN points out, the documents don't show an intentional withholding of information, but they do show that information they reported to the public deviated from what they believed to be taking place. For example, around the beginning of the pandemic on February 10, Chinese officials announced 2,478 new confirmed cases. However, the Hubei Provincial CDC recorded 5,918 new cases on that date, which consisted of 2,345 "confirmed cases," 1,772 "clinically diagnosed cases," and 1,796 "suspected cases."
It was also revealed that the province of Hubei was enduring an influenza epidemic in late 2019. Experts revealed to CNN that the dual outbreak of flu and COVID-19 would have made it challenging for health experts to pay attention to any new viruses like COVID-19.
This comes amid news of the U.S. and EU pressuring China to comply with the World Health Organization about the origin of the virus, which has infected more than 60 million people and killed 1.46 million.
Source: CNN
