1.新聞網址︰
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-v
irus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says
https://tinyurl.com/tjd552l
2.新聞來源︰
彭博社 Bloomberg
Nick Wadhams, Jennifer Jacobs
3.新聞內容︰
China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, und
er-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the
U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White Hous
e, according to three U.S. officials.
The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret and decl
ined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s publi
c reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the offici
als said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.
The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials sai
d.
The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country ha
s publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to dat
a compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cas
es and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly repo
rted outbreak in the world.
Communications staff at the White House and Chinese embassy in Washington didn
’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
While China eventually imposed a strict lockdown beyond those of less autocrat
ic nations, there has been considerable skepticism of China’s reported number
s, both outside and within the country. The Chinese government has repeatedly
revised its methodology for counting cases, for weeks excluding people without
symptoms entirely, and only on Tuesday added more than 1,500 asymptomatic cas
es to its total.
Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have drive
n public doubt in Beijing’s reporting.
Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House on it
s response to the outbreak, said Tuesday that China’s public reporting influe
nced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus.
“The medical community made