The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has again assailed China for unleashing COVID-19 on the world. Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the pandemic would have been eradicated by now if it had first appeared in Taiwan and not mainland China.
Azar was in Taiwan on a three-day official visit. His delegation was the highest-level trip to Taiwan since the U.S. government severed diplomatic relations in 1979. Azar is using his visit to deliver Trump's message blaming China for the pandemic. Tensions between China and the U.S. are at their highest since Trump became president.
"The Chinese Communist Party had the chance to warn the world and work with the world battling the virus," Azar said at the National Taiwan University. "But they chose not to and the costs of that choice mount higher every day."
"I believe it is no exaggeration to say that if this virus had emerged in a place like Taiwan or the U.S. it might have been snuffed out easily," he said.
But China appears to have resisted information-sharing. It also silenced doctors who encouraged immediate action when the threat first appeared in Wuhan, China in December.
Azar said it was in mid-February only when China decided to allow a team of international experts to assist with the investigation into COVID-19. At the same time China claimed the U.S. had done nothing to help in the fight against the new disease.
Azar said the U.S. and Taiwan were advocates of international health security and international health regulations. Azar said Taiwan's exclusion from the World Health Organization was especially puzzling "when its contributions to global health began long before the COVID-19 pandemic."
Azar met with Taiwan foreign minister Joseph Wu. Wu said life in Taiwan had become increasingly difficult "as China continues to pressure Taiwan into accepting its political conditions - conditions that will turn Taiwan into the next Hong Kong."
Wu said his country had succeeded in stemming the spread of COVID-19 - in contrast to China "where the authority is too crippled to disclose fact. In the transparent Taiwan...we simply can't afford to lie or conceal."
Taiwan reported 480 confirmed COVID-19 cases and seven deaths as of Wednesday, according to Worldometer data - or 165th in the world in total cases. The U.S. has 5.6 million infections and 169,000 deaths. To date more than 20.7 million international infections have been recorded and there have been 751,000 deaths.
