China COVID-19 cover-up allegations

The China COVID-19 cover-up refers to the Government of China's efforts to hide information about the early outbreak of the COVID-19 in Wuhan in December 2019. Several governments and media organisations have also alleged that the Chinese government has inhibited efforts to trace the origins of SARS-CoV-2 in China. Some have also questioned the accuracy of China's reported case and fatality figures.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Chinese government delayed the release of information and clamped down on discussion and reporting about it, fund and control further research into the virus's origins, and promote fringe theories about the virus.
The Chinese government has stated that it did not cover up information related to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Cover-up of the initial Wuhan outbreak
As COVID-19 began spreading within China between December 2019 - February 2020, Chinese authorities prevented doctors and laboratories from sharing information about the outbreak, including admonishing frontline healthcare professionals and perceived whistleblowers, most notably, Li Wenliang. By 27 December 2019, the local government knew there was an outbreak of pneumonia. At least one healthcare worker had already been infected, which, under international healthcare regulations, requires a country to report an outbreak to the World Health Organization (WHO), as it is considered proof of person-to-person spread. However, China did not report the outbreak to the WHO at that time. Instead, the WHO noticed a media report of the outbreak on 31 December. On 3 January, when China acknowledged the outbreak to the WHO, it called it "viral pneumonia of unknown cause", even though they had the complete genetic sequence at that time. It also said that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, even though 20 cases had already been confirmed among medical workers.
Release of the genetic sequence
By 27 December 2019, a lab called Vision Medicals had most of the sequence of the new virus. On 2 January 2020, Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) decoded the entire sequence. By 5 January, two more labs had obtained the sequence, including the Shanghai Public Clinical Health Center led by Zhang Yongzhen, who submitted the sequence to the United States government's GenBank database. On 11 January, Zhang's lab published the sequence on virological.org. Three people stated that this angered the Chinese CDC, and the Shanghai government temporarily closed Zhang's lab. Zhang said that the closure was not retaliation for publishing the genome, but instead was to improve the lab's biosafety protocols. On 24 January the lab was accredited to research the novel coronavirus. On 12 January, the WIV and the other labs released their sequences.
Silencing of medical workers
Li Wenliang was an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital. On 30 December 2019, he had seen seven cases of a virus he thought looked like SARS. He sent a message to fellow doctors in a chat group warning them to wear protective clothing to avoid infection. He and seven other doctors were later told to come to the Public Security Bureau and told to sign a letter. The letter accused them of "making false comments" that would "disturb the social order". Wang Guangbao, who is a Chinese surgeon and science writer, later said that by 1 January, people in medical circles thought that a SARS-like virus might be spreading, but the police warning discouraged them from talking openly about it. Li later died of the virus, and China later apologized to his family and overturned the warning in the letter.
A nurse said that by early January, doctors and nurses had noticed that they too were getting sick. Hospital administrators made long calls to the City Government and Health Commission. However, medical personnel were not allowed to wear protective gear, because it would cause panic. Health and governance experts place much of the blame on higher-level officials, as local authorities in China can be punished for reporting bad news.
Arrest or disappearance of citizen journalists
As of December 2020, around a year after the outbreak, at least 47 journalists were currently in detention in China for their reporting on the initial coronavirus outbreak.
Chinese citizen journalist Chen Qiushi started reporting on the outbreak from Wuhan on 23 January 2020. He disappeared on 6 February. On 24 September, a friend said he had been found. He was being supervised by "a certain government department", but would not face prosecution for the moment because he had not contacted opposition groups.
Fang Bin is a Chinese citizen journalist who broadcast images of Wuhan during the outbreak several times on social media. He was arrested several times during February 2020. The last arrest was on 9 February, and as of September 2020, he had not been seen in public since.
Another citizen journalist, Zhang Zhan, stopped sharing information on social media in May 2020. On 28 December, she was sentenced to 4 years in prison. According to one of her attorneys, she was convicted of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble".
Doubts on official statistics
Timothy P.H. Lin and his collaborators said in May 2020 that there are doubts on some statistics from China (i.e. death tallies) because of alleged political censorship; however, come to the conclusion that due to the lack of any known deaths of Hong Kong or Taiwan residents in Mainland China, which would be newsworthy, that the official numbers do not form a particularly large discrepancy from the actual death numbers.
Actions that inhibit research on the origin of COVID-19
Two universities in China published and then removed pages saying that papers about COVID-19 needed extra scrutiny before publication, in what British newspaper The Guardian suggested might be "part of a wider attempt to control the narrative surrounding the pandemic". A preprint from the American Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center stated that scientists in China published and then took down COVID-19 sequences; some scientists said that this suggested "China has something to hide about the origins of the pandemic", but others countered that the information was later republished. David Robertson, a virologist from the University of Glasgow UK, said he thinks the Chinese Communist Party wants the origin of SARS-CoV-2 to be a location outside of China.
Control of domestic research
In January 2020, Chinese biomechanics researcher Botao Xiao released a paper saying that the virus probably came from a lab leak. He withdrew the paper after Chinese officials insisted that no lab accident had taken place. In February 2021, the head of an international WHO team investigating the origins of COVID-19 said the disease is “extremely unlikely” to have come from a laboratory.
According to CNN, Fudan University in China published a document describing how research into COVID-19 should be vetted. All research needs approval, and research into its origin needs extra scrutiny, with the document stating that "academic papers about tracing the origin of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed." After CNN contacted the China Education ministry's science and technology department about the notice, it was taken down. A Chinese researcher, who insisted on anonymity for fear of retaliation, said he thought the document was part of a "coordinated attempt to control the narrative" about the virus. According to , which also described the episode, research on other medical topics is not subject to similar scrutiny.
On 30 December 2020, the Associated Press reported that China was still controlling domestic research into the virus under direct orders from Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping. Researchers who are authorized to investigate the virus often work closely with the military, and their research must be approved by a task force under the management of . An order by the State Council, marked "not to be made public", said that scientific publication should be orchestrated like "a game of chess", and people who do not comply shall be held accountable.
Actions against foreign research
The World Health Organization investigation into the source of COVID-19 was delayed over a year by negotiations over the arrangements. When the WHO-convened study was conducted during 14 January - 10 February 2021, the Chinese authorities only provided limited access. The Chinese authorities did not share a specific list of early cases with the international team. Instead, this information was shared with a Chinese team. The Chinese team then gave the international team a summary. With the line-by-line list of individual cases, the team could have contacted each person and tried to determine where they might have become infected. Members of the WHO team have reiterated that the Chinese team "was and still is reluctant to share raw data (for instance, on the 174 cases identified in December 2019), citing concerns
over patient confidentiality".
China has closed access to an abandoned mine shaft which once contained bats who were infected by RaTG13, the closest known viral relative of COVID-19. Two researchers managed to get samples from the shaft, but their samples were confiscated. Three teams from the Associated Press were followed by Chinese security agents.
In June 2021, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center found 13 genome sequences that were deleted from the Sequence Read Archive following a request by researchers at Wuhan University. They were originally published by a Chinese researcher and represent samples collected near the start of the pandemic. The sequences are more distantly related to bats than the active variants of COVID-19. Researchers do not believe this finding supports either a natural or lab origin.
China has refused to allow an independent investigation into the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Disputes with other countries over proposed inquiries
After the Australian government called for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19, Chinese ambassador Cheng Jingye said that Australia was treading a "dangerous path". Shortly afterwards, the Chinese government banned beef imports from Australia's four biggest abattoirs. It also put a tariff of over 80% on Australian barley and informally banned imports of Australian coal. The Chinese government later agreed to an inquiry. An article in The Economist speculated that an inquiry "might reveal China doing more to suppress information about early infections than to quash the outbreak itself".
Refusal to cooperate with second phase of WHO investigation
On 15 July 2021, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis had been prematurely discarded by the World Health Organization. He proposed a second phase of WHO investigation, which he said should take a closer look at the lab leak idea, and asked China to be "transparent" and release relevant data. The United States criticised China's position on the follow-up origin probe as "irresponsible" and "dangerous". Science journalist Jon Cohen said that " relative openness to collaboration during the joint mission seems to have evaporated".
Chinese government response to cover-up allegations
The Chinese government has repeatedly denied there has been any cover-up in its handling of early outbreak and origin.
Society and culture
Taiwan News reported that Malaysian Chinese rapper Namewee made a music video mocking the Chinese Communist Party's coverup and obfuscation of the early outbreak and origins of the pandemic in Wuhan.

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