As the United States struggles to contain the pandemic and the European Union faces a fresh wave of cases, life in many parts of China is more or less back to normal.

Schools and movie theaters have reopened, cities are hosting large events, social distancing and masks rules have been relaxed, and people are resuming their old habits and routines — with some modifications.

It’s a sharp departure from the early days of the outbreak when China was the epicenter of the virus and anxiety gripped the country. The authoritarian government instituted a strict lockdown that successfully curbed cases, and now local transmission rates are near zero. The total number of confirmed cases in the country is 84,951, with at least 4,634 deaths from the virus. In the United States, nearly 5.7 million people have been infected and at least 176,200 have died.

Experts warn that China could still face a resurgence, and many are worried that the public isn’t taking the virus seriously enough. Still, many are just glad to be returning to something resembling normal life.

Yuki Liu, a 28-year-old who works at a foreign trading company, attended a crowded pool party rave in Wuhan this month where she said she felt “relaxed and free.”

“To be honest, I almost forgot about the epidemic,” she said.

A LEADING Chinese scientist claims that the coronavirus came from a military lab in China and not from a wet market as Beijing says.

Dr Li Meng-Yan, a specialist in virology at Hong Kong’s School of Public Health who fled to the US says that she “clearly assessed” that Coronavirus was created in a lab linked to the People’s Liberation Army. However, Beijing have denied the allegations.

Related: Asia Pacific stocks mostly higher as investors watch coronavirus developments; Nissan stock plunges

Speaking during a live-stream interview with Taiwan News Agency Lude Press, Dr Li-Meng said: “At that time, I had clearly assessed that the virus came from a Chinese Communist Party military lab.

“The Wuhan wet market was just used as a decoy.”

She stressed that when she reported her findings to her superiors, she was not taken seriously and ignored.

At that point, she claimed that it would be impossible for her to report the discovery to the high levels of the Communist Party.

Coronavirus could be from a military lab, it is claimed (Image: Lude Press Taiwan/YouTube/Getty )

She continued: “I knew that once I spoke up, I could disappear at any time, just like all the brave protesters in Hong Kong.

“I could disappear at any time. Even my name would no longer exist.”

She claimed that it was her responsibility to get the information out before being “disappeared.”

Dr Li-Meng pointed out that she had been raised and educated under the Communist Party regime and knew “what kinds of things the Chinese government would do” but did not dare guess “how low [the CCP] would stoop.”

The virologist pledged that she would continue to tell the truth about the Bejing regime and the pandemic with the hope of “accelerating the outside world’s understanding of the regime and helping the Chinese people to overthrow it.”

Before speaking out, she fleed to the US in April from Hong Kong fearing for her safety.

Speaking to Fox News earlier this month, she claimed that she led to leave because of “how the Chinese authorities treated whistleblowers in order to conceal an epidemic.

Dr Li-Meng stressed that the escape was to “deliver the message of the truth of COVID-19 to the world.”

China has denied the allegations (Image: Getty)

Dr Li-Meng says that she was one of the first scientists in the world to study coronavirus.

She allegedly asked by her supervisor at the University/WHO reference lab, Dr. Leo Poon to look into the odd cluster of SARS-like cases occurring in Wuhan at the end of December 2019.

The virologist, added: “The China government refused to let overseas experts, including ones in Hong Kong, do research in China.

“So I turned to my friends to get more information.”

After presenting her findings, Dr Li-Meng claimed that her supervisors at first advised her to continue her investigation but later she said to “keep silent and be careful”.

In response to the claims, a Hong Kong School of Public Health spokesperson said that Dr Li-Meng is not currently an employee.

It added: “Dr Li-Meng Yan is no longer a staff member of the University.

“Out of respect for our current and former employees, we don’t disclose personal information about her. Your understanding is appreciated.”

This story was originally published here: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1317588/China-coronavirus-cover-up-scientist-military-lab-wet-market-where-did-coronavirus-start

Shocking footage of a wet market in Vietnam has revealed frogs having their legs cut off with scissors, turtles struggling to escape from cages, and fish being hit with knives as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the globe.

Chickens and ducks were also seen sitting on top of each other in cramped cages that were placed next to the decapitated bodies of other ducks, while the skinned bodies of dogs lay on market tables.

Workers were often seen handling animals without wearing face masks, aprons and, in one case, plastic gloves.

The chilling scenes unfolded despite repeated warnings that close proximity to animals and unsanitary conditions raise the risk of a new pandemic.

Coronavirus, which has triggered a global lockdown, is believed to have jumped into humans from bats via an intermediary animal at a wet market in Wuhan, China.

Vietnam’s ‘wet markets’ allowed to open despite coronavirus threat

Turtles were filmed scrambling to get out of cages at a wet market inside Vietnam. The conditions are continuing despite the risk they pose of triggering a second pandemic

The dead animals were lain out in the open and exposed to the elements before they were sold

One clip from the market shows piles of frog intestines on the floor as a worker rips the skin off a frogs legs before chucking it into a bloodied and dirty basket.

The scissors used to cut the frog are then placed into the pile of intestines, before being picked up for re-use.

In a second clip the fish are seen being decapitated on a block stained red by the blood of other fish moments earlier.

One worker is even shown pinning a fish down as they decapitate it without wearing gloves, a face mask, or an apron to cover their clothes.

Another worker, cutting up frogs, is shown wearing only plastic gloves and wellies.

The World Health Organisation has warned that conditions such as these are ‘unacceptable’ due to the risk they pose to human and animal health.

They said: ‘It increases the risk of contamination of the meat with foodborne pathogens.’

A worker was also photographed killing a fish without wearing plastic gloves or a face mask

The World Health Organisation has warned that conditions like these risk triggering a second pandemic. Coronavirus is thought to have jumped into humans at a wet market

The animal rights activists that took the footage told MailOnline: ‘The conditions and slaughter process, as well as being horrendous for the animals, pose a real risk for pathogen spread to workers.
‘(They) are constantly exposed to potentially infected animals, and to customers on these busy markets.
‘In these poorly regulated markets animals are usually slaughtered in the middle of market stands, often on the floor among cages filled with more animals – by using simple tools like scissors.’
Vietnam was forced to close all schools and impose a 14-day quarantine for travellers as it faced the pandemic.
However, swift action and relentless contact tracing meant that the country only suffered 355 cases, and is yet to record a single death.

A woman is shown sending dead animals piled together at the wet market in Vietnam

The bodies of dogs were also seen piled up on a stall at the market

Its government is currently considering a ban on wildlife trade in response to the pandemic, but it is unclear whether this will cover only viral reservoir species – such as bats and pangolins – or be extended.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc tasked the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to come up with a plan by April 1.

But, following the country’s success in handling the disease, the government appears to have abandoned the proposal, reports Mongabay.

China is the only country to have implemented a large-scale ban on its wildlife trade since the pandemic began.

Conservation organisations including PETA and Open Cages are calling on countries to end all wet markets.

The WHO initially appeared to support the proposals before backing away on May 9.

Open Cages CEO, Connor Jackson, said: ‘When will we learn? The covid-19 outbreak has exposed how fragile, cruel and dangerous wet markets are.

‘So we cannot leave animal well-being and the safety of humanity in the hands of ineffective regulations.

‘Ban these cruel live animal markets and the risk of another pandemic will be significantly reduced. We urge the Vietnamese authorities to close these facilities immediately.’

The video was filmed between February and March 2020, at the beginning of the outbreak, before it was released today. Activists said the market has remained open.

The markets location inside Vietnam was not disclosed.

What is the origin of coronavirus?

Coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, first jumped to humans from bats, genetic evidence has confirmed.

Research published in The Lancet said bats were the ‘most probably’ original host of the virus, after analysing samples taken from the lungs of nine patients in Wuhan.

And scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the People’s Liberation Army and Institut Pasteur of Shanghai, have also pointed the finger to bats as the likely origin.

However, where the virus made the jump into humans remains unclear.

Initial reports suggested it happened at a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan, China, where humans are exposed to animal meat, blood and excrement.

However, Chinese authorities have sought to pour cold water on this and label the market as a victim rather than a ‘super-spreader’.

They said a test of animals in the market showed ‘none’ had Covid-19.

This challenged research by scientists at Harvard, MIT and the University of British Columbia, who examined four samples from the market and found traces of the virus ‘99.9 per cent’ identical to those taken from a Wuhan patient.

The first case of coronavirus was reported in Wuhan in December 2019.

@ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8479911/Shocking-footage-wet-market-Vietnam-shows-frogs-cut-scissors.html

Creating a travel bubble with China moves to the backburner following an outbreak of infections in a Beijing market on Sunday.

Thailand’s Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told the local media last Friday that Thailand, now almost Covid-19 free, was ready to talk to China and New Zealand to create bubble tourism and reboot essential travel.

However, BBC reported on Sunday that an area of the Chinese capital Beijing is now under strict lockdown measures after the city’s first coronavirus cases in more than 50 days.

The outbreak has been linked to the city’s largest wholesale market, Xinfadi where 45 people out of 517 tested positive for Covid-19. None had displayed any symptoms.

Lockdowns have been imposed in 11 nearby neighbourhoods, while 10,000 market staff will be tested.

China has 84,288 confirmed cases and reported 4,438 fatalities, while Thailand infections have reached 3,135 and 58 deaths.

The Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) said that creating travel bubble with served by an airline corridor between nations that Covid-19 free was on the table.

China topped the list followed by South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and New Zealand.

Thailand’s CCSA said it might open the country to international flights after 30 June first on a limited basis to kick-start travel mainly for foreigners who have work permits and need to return to Thailand and the remaining Thais who want to return home. At present, a ban on commercial flights to Thailand is in place, and it is understood that the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand will not extend the ban after it expires. But anything is possible, and there are growing concerns that second waves will hit the UK and the US. Iran reported on Saturday that a second wave had been reported in some cities.

Possibly by August, the first travel bubble for leisure travel from either South Korea or China could be achieved with Thailand, but discussions with China might now be premature if the Beijing infections spread further.

Even if travel bubbles are created, they come with restrictions such as having a “fit to fly” certification as well as a medical certificate not older than 72-hours that confirms the traveller has been declared Covid-19 free valid for no more 72 hours.

It would also require they show proof of medical insurance with USD100,000 cover that might not be widely available or excludes Covid-19.

Local media reports suggest the Ministry of Tourism and Sports is discussing incentives to support domestic travel now that all the domestic airports, including Phuket, have reopened. Thailand ended the curfew at midnight on 14 June. It was first introduced in March. The emergency decree remains in place until the end of June giving the government powers to introduce measures without the need to pass legislation.

@ Reporting by TTR

Stop debating Beijing’s intentions and take Xi Jinping both seriously and literally.

Can we pay the Chinese Communist Party the compliment of acknowledging that it means what it says and knows what it wants? That may be the key to understanding Beijing’s strategic ambitions in the coming decades.

A long-standing trope in the U.S. debate on that subject is that China itself doesn’t know what it seeks to achieve, that its leaders haven’t yet worked out how far Beijing’s influence should reach. Yet there is a growing body of evidence, assembled and interpreted by talented China experts, that the Chinese government is indeed aiming for global power and perhaps global primacy over the next generation — that it seeks to upend the American-led international system and create at least a competing, quasi-world order of its own.

It doesn’t take unparalleled powers of deduction to reach this conclusion. Top Chinese officials and members of the country’s foreign policy community are becoming increasingly explicit in saying so themselves.

President Xi Jinping more than hinted at this goal in his landmark address to the 19th Party Congress in October 2017. That speech represents one of the most authoritative statements of the party’s policy and aims; it reflects Xi’s understanding of what China has accomplished under Communist rule and how it must advance in the future.

Xi declared that China “has stood up, grown rich, and is becoming strong,” and that it was now “blazing a new trail for other developing countries” and offering “Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind.” By 2049, Xi promised, China would “become a global leader in terms of composite national strength and international influence” and would build a “stable international order” in which China’s “national rejuvenation” could be fully achieved.

This was the statement of a leader who sees his country not just participating in global affairs but setting the terms, and it testifies to two core themes in China’s foreign policy discourse.

The first is a deeply skeptical view of the existing international system. Chinese leaders recognize that the global trade regime has been indispensable to the country’s economic and military rise. Yet when they look at the key features of the world Washington and its allies have made, they see mostly threats.

In their view, American alliances do not preserve peace and stability; they stunt China’s potential and prevent Asian nations from giving Beijing its due. Seen through that lens, promoting democracy and human rights is neither moral nor benign, but propaganda supporting a dangerous doctrine that threatens to delegitimize the Communist government and energize its domestic enemies. U.S.-led international institutions appear as tools for imposing America’s will on weaker states. The Communist Party recognizes that the liberal international order has brought benefits, writes Nadege Rolland, a senior fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research, but “the party abhors and dreads” the principles on which it is based.

The second theme is that the international order must change — not a little, but a lot — for China to become fully prosperous and secure. Chinese leaders have, understandably, been somewhat opaque in describing the world they want, but the outlines are becoming easier to discern.

If one studies the statements of Xi and other top officials, China expert Liza Tobin concludes, what emerges is a vision in which “a global network of partnerships centered on China would replace the U.S. system of treaty alliances” and the world would view Chinese authoritarianism as preferable to Western democracy.

Based on a similar analysis, Rolland agrees that China has “a yearning for partial hegemony,” a loose dominance over large swaths of the global south. When it comes to global governance, still other examinations show, Beijing wants a system in which international institutions buttress rather than batter repressive regimes. Meanwhile, Chinese strategists and academics are talking openly about building a “new China-centric global economic order.”

There is little indication, in any of this, that Beijing’s strategic horizon is limited to the Western Pacific or even Asia. Xi’s invocation of a “community with a shared future for humanity” indicates a global tableau for Chinese influence. One hardly has to read between the lines to understand that this agenda will require fundamentally resetting the current geopolitical balance. As Xi remarked several years ago, China must work resolutely toward “a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position.”

Of course, there’s not need to take literally everything national leaders say, or even everything that makes it into official speeches. In Beijing’s case, however, Chinese leaders are actually saying less than what the country is doing.

Whether it is the naval shipbuilding program that is churning out vessels at astonishing rate; the drive to control existing international organizations and build new ones; the projection of military power in the Arctic, the Indian Ocean and points beyond; the quest to dominate the world’s high-tech industries; the ever-more systematic efforts to support authoritarian regimes and weaken democratic institutions; or the Belt and Road Initiative that encompasses multiple continents, China is hardly acting like a country that lacks a grand geopolitical design.

As with so many aspects of the U.S.-China competition, there is a Cold War parallel. During the 1970s, some leading American Sovietologists insisted that Moscow was becoming a satisfied, status quo power. Yet that claim required ignoring what Soviet leaders said about detente and peaceful coexistence — that it was a way of ensuring the triumph of socialism without war — as well as their efforts to build military superiority and positions of strength in the Third World. The warning signs were evident then, as they are today.

China probably doesn’t have a step-by-step checklist for achieving global primacy, any more than the Soviet Union did in the 1970s. Chinese leaders aren’t insensitive to costs and obstacles: Xi may ritualistically restate the importance of unifying the Chinese nation, but that doesn’t mean he’s hell-bent on war over Taiwan.

Beijing may not even have decided which of its two paths to global influence is preferable: Establishing dominance in the Western Pacific and then expanding outward from there, or outflanking the U.S. position in the region by building up economic and political power around the world. Finally, China may ultimately fail to accomplish any of this. Perhaps the coronavirus will so weaken the U.S. and the liberal order that China’s ascent will be accelerated. Or perhaps China will run into so many internal problems, and so much external resistance, that its drive will stall.

Yet we ought to recognize that the debate about what China wants is growing stale, because China’s leaders and behavior have increasingly answered that question. When a proud and powerful challenger starts to advertise its global ambitions, Americans should probably err on the side of taking those ambitious seriously.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Hal Brands at Hal.Brands@jhu.edu

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net

@ Bloomberg

Hackers linked to the Chinese government are trying to steal coronavirus-related research on vaccines, treatments and testing, the FBI and a U.S. cybersecurity agency warned Wednesday.

The FBI, in a joint statement with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said it is investigating “the targeting and compromise of U.S. organizations conducting COVID-19-related research by [People’s Republic of China]-affiliated cyber actors and non-traditional collectors.”

The hackers have been caught attempting to “identify and illicitly obtain valuable intellectual property” and public health data related to coronavirus research, according to the statement.

“The potential theft of this information jeopardizes the delivery of secure, effective, and efficient treatment options,” the statement read.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, is a division of the Homeland Security Department.

The federal agencies urged all U.S. organizations researching the virus to beef up their cybersecurity practices to “prevent surreptitious review or theft of COVID-19-related material.”

The coronavirus originated near the city of Wuhan in China’s Hubei province and has since grown to a global pandemic that has hit the U.S. harder than any other country, according to data on confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths. More than 1.3 million cases and at least 82,389 deaths have so far been counted in the U.S., data from Johns Hopkins University shows.

U.S. political leaders and health experts have said that the world may not be relieved of the disease’s massive impact on daily life, which has brought the United States economy to a virtual standstill, until an effective vaccine is made widely available.

But even if a vaccine is developed at a breakneck pace, it could still be at least a year to 18 months away.

“Biomedical research has long been at the heart of something the Chinese have wanted and something they have engaged in economic espionage to get,” John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security, told CNBC on Monday.

“It would be crazy to think that right now, the Chinese were not behind some of the cyberactivity we’re seeing targeting U.S. pharmaceutical companies and targeting research institutes around the country that are doing coronavirus research, treatments and vaccines,” Demers said on “The Exchange.”

The unfolding health crisis caused by the coronavirus is the latest issue to rattle relations between Beijing and Washington. The world’s two largest economies were already engaged in a disruptive trade war with intellectual property theft proving to be a major sticking point between the two nations.

U.S. officials have long complained that Chinese intellectual property theft has cost the economy billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs and that it threatens national security. China maintains that it does not engage in intellectual property theft.

The F-35, the crown jewel in the defense giant Lockheed Martin’s portfolio, had its sensitive design and electronics data compromised in 2009. Chinese hackers were believed to be behind the cyber-intrusion.

China later announced it was developing its own fifth-generation fighter, the stealth Shenyang J-31 jet, which bears a striking resemblance to the F-35.

The Trump administration is also working to isolate Chinese tech firm Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, from developing a larger foothold in U.S. partner countries.

China’s actions have received bipartisan criticism: Earlier this year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., took a hard stand against doing business with Huawei, and warned other nations not to deal with the company.

After years of negotiations, the Trump administration and the Chinese government in January signed the first phase of a trade agreement. But President Donald Trump has in recent weeks blamed China for the virus and sharply criticized its handling of the outbreak.

“It could have been stopped right where it came from,” Trump said in March.

On Wednesday morning, Trump tweeted, “We just made a great Trade Deal, the ink was barely dry, and the World was hit by the Plague from China.”

“100 Trade Deals wouldn’t make up the difference – and all those innocent lives lost!” Trump wrote.

As I have said for a long time, dealing with China is a very expensive thing to do. We just made a great Trade Deal, the ink was barely dry, and the World was hit by the Plague from China. 100 Trade Deals wouldn’t make up the difference – and all those innocent lives lost!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2020

Reporting by Kevin Breuninger, Kevin Stankiewicz and Amanda Macias @ CNBC

— CNBC’s Berkeley Lovelace Jr. contributed to this report.

China has issued a lengthy rebuttal of what it said were 24 “preposterous allegations” by some leading U.S. politicians over its handling of the new coronavirus outbreak.

The Chinese foreign ministry has dedicated most of its press briefings over the past week to rejecting accusations by U.S. politicians, especially Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that China had withheld information about the new coronavirus and that it had originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan.

A 30-page, 11,000-word article posted on the ministry website on Saturday night repeated and expanded on the refutations made during the press briefings, and began by invoking Abraham Lincoln, the 19th century U.S. president.

“As Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all the time and fool all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time,” it said in the prologue.

The article also cited media reports that said Americans had been infected with the virus before the first case was confirmed in Wuhan. There is no evidence to suggest that is the case.

Keen to quash U.S. suggestions that the virus was deliberately created or somehow leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the article said that all evidence shows the virus is not man-made and that the institute is not capable of synthesising a new coronavirus.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian attends a news conference in Beijing, China

“TIMELY” WARNINGS

The article also provided a timeline of how China had provided information to the international community in a “timely”, “open and transparent” manner to rebuke U.S. suggestions that it had been slow to sound the alarm.

Despite China’s repeated assurances, concerns about the timeliness of its information have persisted in some quarters.

A report by Der Spiegel magazine last Friday cited Germany’s BND spy agency as saying that China’s initial attempt to hold back information had cost the world four to six weeks that could have been used to fight the virus.

The article rejected Western criticism of Beijing’s handling of the case of Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old doctor who had tried to raise the alarm over the outbreak of the new virus in Wuhan. His death from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, prompted an outpouring of rage and grief across China.

The ministry article said Li was nThe article did mention that Li was reprimanded by the police for “spreading rumours”. Though Li was later named among “martyrs” mourned by China, an investigation into his case also drew criticism online after it merely suggested the reprimand against him be withdrawn.

Rejecting suggestions by U.S. President Donald Trump and Pompeo that the new coronavirus should be called the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus”, the article cited documents from the World Health Organization to say the name of a virus should not be country-specific.

(Corrects to fix grammar in paragraph 11. Corrects to say article did mention Li’s reprimand, not did not mention, in paragraph 12.)

Reporting by Yew Lun Tian; Editing by Gareth Jones @ Reuters

Not all of Vietnam will have social distancing measures lifted, state media said. A town of 7,600 people in the northern mountainous province of Ha Giang was locked down near the border with China after one case was detected there this month.

Two rural villages with a combined population of 12,000 people on the outskirts of the capital, Hanoi, will remain on lockdown, state media said.

Country’s impressive handling of the public-health aspects of the Covid-19 crisis isn’t matched by its fiscal response

Vietnam became one of the first countries in the world to ease social-distancing measures this week. But its impressive public health response to the coronavirus pandemic only serves to underline the financial constraints it and other developing nations face in responding to the economic fallout.

The government has reported fewer than 300 cases of Covid-19 and no deaths. Unlike other low-income countries with minimal diagnostic capacity, Vietnam has conducted more than 180,000 tests.

No provinces in Vietnam were now seen as “highly prone” to the pandemic, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said in a statement, although some non-essential businesses will remain closed.

Vietnam has won plaudits for appearing to contain the virus despite being less wealthy than other places seen as relatively successful such as South Korea and Taiwan. It has reported no new infections for nearly a week.

It has used a combination of the mass quarantine of tens of thousands, contact-tracing and testing to successfully contain relatively small clusters of COVID-19 outbreaks.

Hanoi may have also gleaned crucial early information from China.

On Wednesday, U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye said Vietnamese hackers had attempted to break into organizations at the centre of Beijing’s efforts to contain the outbreak, days before the first international COVID-19 cases were reported.

It also took other early measures. One day after the first two cases were detected in Vietnam, Hanoi suspended flights to China’s Wuhan, where the outbreak started.

Days later, Vietnam closed its porous 1,400-km (870-mile) border with China to all but essential trade and travel and, by March, made the wearing of masks in public places mandatory nationwide.

Vietnam, which in 2003 became the first country outside China to be infected by the SARS epidemic, also has by far the largest ratio of testing to confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world.

According to data published by Vietnam’s health ministry on Wednesday, Vietnam has carried out 180,067 tests and detected just 268 cases, 83% of whom it says have recovered. There have been no reported deaths.

The figures are equivalent to nearly 672 tests for every one detected case, according to the Our World in Data website. The next highest, Taiwan, has conducted 132.1 tests for every case, the data showed.

Communist-ruled and traditionally secretive Vietnam has made much of its data public.

@ Reuters/ WSJ

A startling discovery has rewritten the timeline of the pandemic in the United States: A woman who died at home in Santa Clara County, Calif., on Feb. 6 was infected with the coronavirus, and probably caught it sometime in January.

Since the woman had no known exposure from travel, her contraction of the virus suggested that it must already have been spreading in the San Francisco Bay Area long before the federal government began restricting travel from China.

Testing in the U.S. was so limited in February — because of tight restrictions and botched test-kit manufacturing — that officials didn’t identify a case of community transmission until Feb. 26 or a virus-linked death until Feb. 29.

Experts said that if officials had known that the virus already had a foothold in the United States, there would have been more urgency in February to expand testing, prepare hospitals and get more protective gear. Instead, the government’s focus was on quarantining travelers from Asia.

Dr. Sara Cody, the county’s chief medical officer, said that the woman’s death as well as another individual on Feb. 17 were newly linked to the virus and were “probably the tip of an iceberg of unknown size.”

Genes trace the path: Researchers studying the virus’s genome believe that it had begun to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, coming mainly from Europe, and that it spread undetected in the Seattle area for weeks after arriving there from Wuhan, China.

Mike Baker and Sheri Fink of The Times report about how the genetically unique version of the virus that landed near Seattle has jumped to 14 other states and now accounts for one-quarter of all U.S. cases whose genetic data has been made public.

By The NYTimes

EXCLUSIVE: There is increasing confidence that COVID-19 likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China’s effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.

This may be the “costliest government coverup of all time,” one of the sources said.

The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus was bat-to-human, and that “patient zero” worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.

The “increasing confidence” comes from classified and open-source documents and evidence, the sources said. Fox News has requested to see the evidence directly.

Asked by Fox News’ John Roberts about the reporting, President Trump remarked at Wednesday’s coronavirus press briefing, “More and more we’re hearing the story…we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation.”

Documents detail early efforts by doctors at the lab and early efforts at containment. The Wuhan wet market initially identified as a possible point of origin never sold bats, and the sources tell Fox News that blaming the wet market was an effort by China to deflect blame from the laboratory, along with the country’s propaganda efforts targeting the U.S. and Italy.

U.S. Embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

In this Tuesday, March 10, 2020, photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping talks by video with patients and medical workers at the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province. (Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via AP)

Responding to the report, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday afternoon: “It should be no surprise to you that we have taken a keen interest in that and we’ve had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that. I would just say at this point, it’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural, but we don’t know for certain.”

“Even today, I see them withholding information and I think we need to do more to continue to press them to share,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told “America’s Newsroom” on Wednesday, referring to China. Esper added that he wouldn’t speak to “intelligence reporting,” but that “most people believe it began naturally — it was organic, if you will. I think in due course, once we get through the pandemic we’re in right now, there’ll be time to look back and really ascertain what happened and make sure we have a better understanding so we can prevent this in the future.”

Speaking to “The Story” Wednesday evening, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo remarked: “What we do know is we know that this virus originated in Wuhan, China. We know there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was. There is still lots to learn. You should know that the United States government is working diligently to figure it out.”

Concerning the State Department cables warning about the Wuhan laboratory, Pompeo said the installation “contained highly contagious materials — we knew that, we knew that they were working on this program, many countries have programs like this. In countries that are open and transparent, they have the ability to control them and keep them safe, and they allow outside observers in to make sure all the processes and procedures are right. I only wish that that had happened in this place.”

Americans were originally helping train the Chinese in a program called PREVENT well before the Chinese started working on this virus. The French government helped the Chinese set up the Wuhan lab.

China “100 percent” suppressed data and changed data, the sources tell Fox News. Samples were destroyed, contaminated areas scrubbed, some early reports erased, and academic articles stifled.

There were doctors and journalists who were “disappeared” warning of the spread of the virus and its contagious nature and human to human transmission. China moved quickly to shut down travel domestically from Wuhan to the rest of China, but did not stop international flights from Wuhan.

Additionally, the sources tell Fox News the World Health Organization (WHO) was complicit from the beginning in helping China cover its tracks.

Commuters wear face masks to protect against the spread of new coronavirus as they walk through a subway station in Beijing, Thursday, April 9, 2020. China’s National Health Commission on Thursday reported dozens of new COVID-19 cases, including most of which it says are imported infections in recent arrivals from abroad and two “native” cases in the southern province of Guangdong. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Trump announced at the White House coronavirus news briefing in the Rose Garden on Tuesday that the United States will immediately halt all funding for the WHO, saying it had put “political correctness over lifesaving measures.” The United States is the WHO’s largest single donor, and the State Department had previously planned to provide the agency $893 million in the current two-year funding period.

Related: WHO regrets Trump funding halt as global coronavirus cases top 2 million

Senior administrations separately tell Fox News the rollout of the president’s “blueprint for re-opening the U.S. economy” will happen Thursday afternoon, first for governors and then briefed to the press.

Meanwhile, Trump’s own handling of the crisis has come into focus. On January 24, for example, Trump tweeted in praise of China’s “transparency” on coronavirus.

Though they were not speaking for the president, the sources ventured an explanation, saying it was diplomatic talk to make the Chinese “feel good”. while the investigation was ongoing, with trade and other talks happening simultaneously.

In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.

President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.

“This is tremendous,” said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.”

Reporting by Bret Baier, Gregg Re | Fox News’ Barnini Chakraborty and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Fox News