• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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BusinessDay

China’s president Xi Jinping knew of coronavirus earlier than thought

xi jinping

President Xi Jinping issued orders to contain the deadly coronavirus outbreak almost two weeks earlier than previously thought, according to an account that appears to contradict the narrative that local officials were to blame for allowing the epidemic to spiral.

The official Communist party magazine Qiushi’s account over the weekend says that Mr Xi met the party’s politburo standing committee, China’s most powerful decision-making body, and gave instructions on the virus response on January 7 — 13 days before the public was warned about the outbreak’s severity.

Previous state media accounts appeared to date Mr Xi’s earliest direct involvement to a January 20 statement made before transportation in and out of the city of Wuhan, where the virus originated, was formally cut off a few days later.

The magazine instead says that he was fully aware of and in charge of the response to the virus almost two weeks earlier, potentially implicating Mr Xi in the bungled early response to the outbreak that contributed to its rapid spread.

On January 18, well after it is now known Mr Xi was issuing an order on the outbreak, a banquet for 40,000 families went ahead in Wuhan with government approval. Officials there and the wider Hubei province also convened for their annual gathering as the authorities downplayed the severity of the virus, insisting there was no evidence it could spread between humans and announcing only a handful of new cases.

Despite this information, China’s leadership on Sunday escalated efforts to demonstrate that it was fully in control, with state media reporting that Saturday was the 12th consecutive day when new cases confirmed outside Hubei were fewer than the day before.

The total number of coronavirus cases in China was approaching 70,000 on Sunday, as 2,009 new cases were confirmed, most of them in Hubei. The number of new deaths climbed by 142 to reach 1,665 overall.
Taiwan’s health ministry on Sunday confirmed the island’s first death from the virus. Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said during a news conference that the deceased was a man in his sixties, who had not travelled abroad recently and had diabetes and hepatitis B.

Ryan Manuel, analyst at consultancy China Official, said it was also possible that the timeline published by Qiushi allowed Mr Xi to be associated with early diagnostic and test development, which have been praised by the World Health Organization while keeping him distanced from repeat failures to contain the outbreak in Hubei.

The spread of the virus has taken a heavy toll on China’s economy despite official orders that production should return to normal. The government is keen for workers to be at their posts on Monday, although passenger traffic numbers suggest workers are not all returning.

Separately on Sunday, passengers from a cruise ship that docked on Friday in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, were sent into quarantine after a US woman who had been on the vessel tested positive for the virus in Malaysia while travelling home.

The Westerdam had been refused entry by five other countries before reaching Cambodia, and some passengers were on their way home after initial tests showed they were healthy. Holland America said 236 passengers and 747 crew remained on board the ship in Sihanoukville.

The belated positive test and continued outbreaks beyond China — including the first death outside Asia, in France — highlights the long incubation period of the virus, the challenges of testing and the prevalence of cases that show no symptoms, all adding to the difficulty of controlling its spread.

Meanwhile, in Japan, authorities said they had discovered a further 70 cases on the Diamond Princess, taking the total to 355 out of the 1,219 people tested. There were around 3,700 people on board when the ship went into quarantine at the start of February.

The US, Canada and Hong Kong have said they planned to evacuate citizens from the ship, which is in Yokohama. A US evacuation flight for passengers is expected to leave Japan on Sunday. Only passengers showing no symptoms will be allowed to fly and they will have to enter a two-week quarantine on arrival in the US.