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WASHINGTON, DC – On January 14th, the world recorded its two millionth COVID-related death. One year earlier to the day, January 14, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) tweeted, “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.” They did this without any independent analysis, rather relying solely on the talking points provided to them by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – a country with a notorious history of lying to the world about deadly outbreaks.The result was a significantly slowed response by countries around the world who did not understand the WHO was prioritizing appeasing the CCP over reporting the facts.

Since March of last year, House Foreign Affairs Lead Republican and China Task Force Chairman Michael McCaul has been calling for an unbiased and transparent investigation into the origins of this virus, but the CCP has continued to block most efforts. To find results, McCaul led his own investigation of the origins of the outbreak, releasing a final report in September outlining how the coverup by the CCP and the WHO’s attempts to appease the CCP turned what could have been a local outbreak into a global pandemic. 

“As we reach the grim milestone of two million COVID-19 related deaths, the Chinese Communist Party, sadly, continues to block efforts to determine the origins of this deadly disease. Just last month, a World Health Organization team of international investigators the CCP initially approved was denied entrance to the country at the last minute. Beijing only relented after the WHO took the rare step of criticizing them publicly. If we are going to try to stop future pandemics like this one from killing millions, the CCP must be fully transparent and allow an outside, unbiased and thorough investigation into the origins of COVID-19. And if they refuse, the WHO must publicly and forcefully condemn their actions. Failure to do so on both parts will only cause a further loss of life.”

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