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The World Health Organization (WHO) denied this weekend that there had been a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and WHO Secretary Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus., at an early stage of the pandemic, in which China urged WHO to delay the global coronavirus pandemic warning.
German media outlet Der Spiegel reported on Friday relevant findings from the German Intelligence Service (BND). According to these, the Chinese head of state, Xi Jinping, asked the WHO director, Tedros, in a phone call on January 21, to delay a global pandemic warning.
According to what Der Spiegel had reported, the BND claimed that Beijing’s information policy had lost at least four weeks, if not six, in the global fight against the virus.
The WHO clearly denied that report. Xi and Tedros would not have spoken that day, he explained. In addition, “they had never spoken on the phone,” said a WHO spokesman. “Such inaccurate reports distract from the world’s and WHO’s efforts to curb the COVID-19 pandemic,” the WHO stressed.
Der Spiegel also assured that the German Government doubts the thesis of the US Government that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory. Consequently, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) would have requested from all the partners of the network of the secret service “Five Eyes” – which includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – evidence of the disseminated thesis by the White House. None of the secret services wanted to confirm data in this regard.
An investigation by the German broadcaster NDR indicates that the alleged secret service dossier that the Australian newspaper Daily Telegraph initially reported may not exist.
China said on Friday it supports an investigation by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. The investigation must be done in an “open, transparent and comprehensive way” after the virus is defeated, according to a State Department spokeswoman in Beijing. Recently, international pressure had increased to allow an international investigation into the origin of the new coronavirus in China.
China’s ambassador to Berlin Wu Ken protested on Friday against the cover-up allegations. China was the first country to “confront the unknown coronavirus” and “did not cover up anything, but reacted quickly and transparently.” However, “this unprecedented epidemic” also showed China’s own shortcomings, Wu told Der Spiegel.
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