A member of the World Health Organization’s emergency committee on coronavirus has accused China of not reporting cases fast enough in the early stages of the outbreak, raising fresh questions about Beijing’s response to the health emergency.
John Mackenzie, emeritus professor at Curtin University, said it defied logic that there was no increase in new cases at the same time that Chinese officials were holding local political meetings in January.
“There must have been more cases happening that we weren’t being told about. I think they tried to keep the figures quiet for a while because of some major meeting they had in Wuhan but I think there was a period of very poor reporting, or very poor communication,” he said, calling Beijing’s response “reprehensible”.