The director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology passed on a warning from the National Health Commission not to publicise tests or data. ‘China knew the new virus was prevalent last December but failed to inform the public or share with the international community,’ said Lianchao Han, a pro-democracy activist. Another medical laboratory testing a Wuhan patient’s sample warned ‘the virus is transmitted by close-range droplet transmission or contact with the respiratory secretions of patients’, and it was ‘clearly contagious’. A third firm testing a sample completed gene-sequencing on December 29, which showed high similarity to Sars, although testing confirmed it was a different disease. One study found that if China had acted three weeks faster, it would have cut cases by 95 per cent.

Source: Daily Mail June 06, 2020 22:10 UTC