The United States questioned the "credibility" of the figures provided by China and related to the number of infections it had after the emergence of the new Corona virus in Beijing, calling for sending "neutral" monitors, while the Chinese capital, Beijing, was isolated from the rest of the country, amid 32 new cases of the virus were recorded in City.
In detail, the Chinese Ministry of Health indicated that 158 cases of the virus have been recorded since last week in the Chinese capital with a population of 21 million, stressing at the same time that the epidemic is "under control".
However, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, David Stillwell, told reporters: "I would like to believe that their numbers are closer to reality than we have seen in Wuhan and other parts of China."
Washington accuses the Chinese authorities of lying about the official outcome, which indicates that there are about 83,000 cases of HIV infection in China, including more than 4,600 deaths since the outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019.
The administration of US President Donald Trump also believes that Beijing has masked the size and severity of the epidemic, which has facilitated the spread of the virus that has killed more than 450,000 people around the world, and forced governments to impose a stone on the population and close economies.
"When it comes to the data, credibility is important, and when we lose credibility it becomes difficult to restore it," Stilwell said, adding that "the only way to restore" China's credibility is by "accepting the deployment of neutral observers who help to understand exactly what happened" at the beginning of the epidemic.
He stressed that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo clearly expressed this demand for "transparency" during his meeting with senior Chinese official Yang Jiechi yesterday in Hawaii.
The controversy surrounding the management of the virus crisis has led to a marked deterioration in the already strained relations between the United States and China.
This comes at a time when American infectious disease expert Anthony Fuchi, yesterday in an interview with Agence France-Presse, saw that it would not be necessary to take new isolation measures in America despite the high number of infections in some American states.
"I don't think we're going to talk about going back to the closure," said the White House's chief epidemiologist and President Trump's epidemiological advisor. "I think we're going to talk about trying to better control those areas of the country that seem to be experiencing an increase in the number of cases."
"We could have done a lot better," said Fauchi, on the United States' management of the disease caused by the virus.
He stressed the necessity of adopting a local approach at every stage of returning to the normal situation in the country, including with regard to the crucial issue about the date of the reopening of schools.
He pointed out that in "provinces where there are no cases at all, there is no problem in opening schools." In other parts of the country, he added, "there are a small number of injuries, (which are places) where school opening can be delayed."
He added, "There are also places in the country where the infection rate is minimal, and the routine should then be changed: following the rotation in the days, morning or afternoon, securing the spacing between people and imposing masks."
Fauchi seemed very cautious about travel and said there was clearly an interest in returning to "a certain form of normalcy in our exchanges with other countries."
However, Fuchi did not take the risk of anticipating the date of re-operating flights with Europe, stressing that the situation is evaluated on a daily basis.
On the other hand, China announced yesterday that it recorded 32 new cases of the emerging coronavirus, as more measures to isolate Beijing from the rest of the country came into effect, as a new outbreak hit the capital's largest agricultural market and infected 183 people last week.
Of the newly recorded cases, 25 have been diagnosed in Beijing, two have been registered in neighboring Hubei Province, and one has been in the northeastern Liaoning Province.
As for the rest of the cases, they were from abroad in Guangdong and Gansu provinces.
All bus lines between provinces were suspended yesterday, which links Beijing with the rest of the country.
Hundreds of flights from Beijing's international airports were also canceled with unnecessary travel bans, and it had become necessary to prove negative the results of recent DNA tests in order to leave the capital.
The study was suspended throughout the city earlier, and every neighborhood was instructed to implement "closed management" systems that oversee and control population movements.
- The debate about the management of the virus crisis has led to a marked deterioration in the already strained relations between the two countries.
"We could have done a lot of things better," said Fauchi, on America's handling of the Corona crisis.