China coronavirus: Washington asks Beijing for permission to send health team to battle outbreak
- Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says he hopes ‘the Chinese government will take us up’ on the offer
- Centres for Disease Control and Prevention director says agency seeks data concerning the transmission of the disease
The US government has asked Beijing for permission to send a team of experts from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to work with domestic health workers on the front lines of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak there.
It has also asked Beijing for more data on confirmed cases in China, as health authorities around the world work to contain the spread of the illness.
In a Washington news conference on Tuesday about the US response to the outbreak, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said his department was waiting for a response from the Chinese government to the request to form a bilateral team, or to accept a team of US experts working under the authority of the World Health Organisation.
Azar said that he had personally extended “the offer … which we do hope that the Chinese government will take us up on that CDC experts are standing by ready, willing, able to go immediately to China either on a bilateral basis or under the auspices of the World Health Organisation”.
Concerning information about the transmission of the disease, CDC Director Robert Redfield said that the agency in particular seeks data on cases caused by contact with individuals who did not present any signs of the illness, which could provide key insights into how the disease is spread and how dangerous it is.
“The Chinese have reported evidence of transmission in the asymptomatic phase, based on data that they have reviewed. The CDC has not been given an opportunity to review that data,” Redfield said. “What we say is that we have not been able to confirm by data the impact of transmission during the asymptomatic phase.