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Coronavirus: Mike Pence tries to blame China and own US health agency for slow response to contagion
- US vice-president renews the volley of recriminations between Washington and Beijing over responsibility for Covid-19’s spread
- ‘In mid-January the CDC was still assessing that the risk of the coronavirus to the American people was low,’ he said
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US Vice-President Mike Pence blamed China and the US government’s own top health authority for missteps that have led to the rapid spread of the coronavirus in America.
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Pence made the comments after Bloomberg News reported that the US intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House that China has concealed the extent of the contagion’s outbreak in its country.
Speaking to CNN, Pence suggested that the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should not have played down the contagion’s spread as it began to take hold in the country and accused China of delaying notification the rest of the world about the coronavirus’ spread.
“I will be very candid with you and say that in mid-January the CDC was still assessing that the risk of the coronavirus to the American people was low,” Pence said when asked why President Donald Trump had initially minimised the threat. “The very first case, which was someone who had been in China, which I believe took place in late January.”
“What appears evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China,” Pence said.
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