Merkel urges 'transparency' from China on outbreak

[striver44]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel news conference on the spread of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Berlin
20 Apr 2020 10:52PM(Updated: 20 Apr 2020 11:20PM)


BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday (Apr 20) urged China to be as transparent as possible about the coronavirus outbreak, as Beijing faces mounting pressure over its management of the crisis.

Critics have accused China of downplaying the scale and scope of the outbreak when it first emerged late last year, while conspiracy theories have swirled in the US the virus could have been leaked from a lab.


READ: The Wuhan lab at the core of a coronavirus controversy
Merkel urged for more information about the early days of the outbreak, which originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

"I believe the more transparent China is about the origin story of the virus, the better it is for everyone in the world in order to learn from it," Merkel told reporters in Berlin Monday.

Chinese scientists say the virus was likely first transmitted to humans at a wet market where wild animals were sold.


READ: China says Australia's questions on its COVID-19 handling groundless[/paste:font]
Chinese authorities have been accused of initially downplaying the outbreak and last week authorities in Wuhan admitted mistakes in counting their death toll and revised the figure up by 50 per cent.

French President Emmanuel Macron last week told the Financial Times it would be "naive" to think China had handled the pandemic well, adding: "There are clearly things that have happened that we don't know about."

In Britain, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said China will face "hard questions" about the coronavirus outbreak, namely "how it came about and how it couldn't have been stopped earlier".

Australia meanwhile has called for an independent investigation into the global response to the pandemic, including the World Health Organization's handling of the crisis.

Its foreign minister has said the country would "insist" on a review that would probe, in part, China's response to the outbreak.

 

[grandmaster]

so what? what benefit Vietnam will get?

 

[Menthol]

Hard to believe.

Downplaying the scale and scope of the outbreak??

Are Wuhan lockdown and intense social distancing on other cities not serious enough compare with how Germany handles coronavirus?

Even after China has done with Wuhan, China is producing a lot of masks, test kits, protection suits, etc to meet global demand, giving so much information on how to handle coronavirus (that followed by most countries around the world), and at the forefront in coronavirus research and vaccine development.


I think it's because most of the Western nations tend to ignore China, that's why they feel like China is in the dark.

I don't think China is mysterious and hard to understand.

As a common person, I know much about China and I can easily find China news including government reports.

It's their own behavior to ignore China, and tend to hear second-handed information that mostly is smearing China.