President Duterte has already thanked China twice in two public addresses on the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, the government has received more than 100,000 test kits from China. The Chinese government has also sent a team of 12 medical experts to share their knowledge in handling Covid-19 cases with Filipino medical professionals. They brought with them 5,000 PPEs, 300,000 surgical masks, 30,000 medical N95 masks, 5,000 medical protective face shields, and 30 noninvasive ventilators from the Chinese government.
As China extends help to other countries, some world leaders remind us that Covid-19 emerged from China and that Chinese authorities suppressed initial information. Various reports said the first clinical evidence of a deadly SARS-like new virus emerged in Wuhan as early as November, but Chinese authorities failed to warn the public about it.
When a Chinese doctor, Li Wenliang, attempted to warn others about the virus, he was harassed, reprimanded and even detained. Li subsequently caught Covid-19 and died in February.
In a Washington Times article on March 20, 2020 (China deliberately hid coronavirus, admonished whistleblowers), Rowan Scarborough said the Chinese government “told the world in early January there was no evidence that its Wuhan coronavirus spread human-to-human even as medical whistleblowers were warning of an epidemic and authorities shut down a wild animal market.”
She said the World Health Organization had relied on China’s assurances. Indeed, Covid-19 was not even classified by WHO as an “international emergency” in January.
At that time, a few hundred tourists from Wuhan were arriving in cruise ships for tours in Boracay and other local tourist destinations.
It was only in early February when WHO declared Covid-19 an international emergency. When the situation got worse, it declared a global pandemic on March 11.
On March 12, President Duterte placed Metro Manila on lockdown (later expanded to the entire Luzon area), suspended government work and classes for a month, and banned non-Filipinos arriving from countries where there were locally transmitted cases of Covid-19.
Days and weeks matter when a virus is spreading like wildfire. The first Covid-19 case was reported on December 8, but the Wuhan municipal health commission didn’t issue an official notice until several weeks later. The first Covid-19 death was reported on January 11, but the commission continued to insist there was no evidence that it could be transmitted among humans.
China eventually acknowledged human-to-human transmission, but its national health commission told the world in January the disease was “preventable and controllable.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping acknowledged the Covid-19 outbreak on January 20, and placed Wuhan on lockdown three days later. By this time, thousands of Chinese were already infected, and the virus was rapidly spreading globally.
Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers, in the New York Times article on February 7, 2020 (As New Coronavirus Spread, China’s Old Habits Delayed Fight) wrote: “The government’s initial handling of the epidemic allowed the virus to gain a tenacious hold. At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment.
“A reconstruction of the crucial seven weeks between the appearance of the first symptoms in early December and the government’s decision to lock down the city, based on two dozen interviews with Wuhan residents, doctors and officials, on government statements and on Chinese media reports, points to decisions that delayed a concerted public health offensive.
“In those weeks, the authorities silenced doctors and others for raising red flags. They played down the dangers to the public, leaving the city’s 11 million residents unaware they should protect themselves. They closed a food market where the virus was believed to have started, but didn’t broadly curb the wildlife trade.
“By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.”
Now, Chinese authorities are congratulating themselves, projecting an image of success against Covid-19, but even this is being disputed by a classified report, which quotes US intelligence sources saying China’s official tally of coronavirus cases and deaths are not accurate.
It is useless to lay the blame at this point, but many lives could have been saved if the correct information about the risks and severity of Covid-19 was relayed to the public and to the world right away, when the virus was initially spreading in Wuhan last year.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano