Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar during Monday’s “America’s Newsroom” on Fox News Channel revealed that at President Donald Trump’s request, he has delivered “an extremely stern warning” to the World Health Organization in regards to its handling of the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak in China.
Azar said his message included a call for “significant structural reform” in the organization, adding the W.H.O. and China need “to be held accountable” for their actions that allowed the virus to spread around the world.
“Well, I’m not going to get ahead of the president making an announcement, but I’m going to tell you, I delivered, at the president’s request, an extremely stern warning and message to the World Health Organization today, which is that they are in need of significant structural reform, they’ve got to be held accountable, there needs to be an independent investigation of them,” Azar outlined. “But, their conduct towards China here, and China’s conduct has got to be on the table.”
“You know, China concealed information about human-to-human transmission,” he continued. “They did not reveal the asymptomatic transmission of this disease, and for a month and a half while I personally fought to get C.D.C. and World Health Organization people into China to learn this kind of evidence, they resisted, for an entire month and a half. Precious time was lost when the world community could have been learning, and China … concealed viral isolates and other evidence that we needed to be able to treat people and prevent the spreads of this disease. And they shut their own cities down while having people continue to fly around the world, seeding the rest of the world with the virus.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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