Coronavirus: White House ‘disappointed’ in China’s lack of transparency
- ‘Some surprise’ at ‘numbers jumping around’, Larry Kudlow says as Beijing announces surge of 15,152 new cases after change in diagnostic criteria
- Senior economic adviser says Beijing won’t let US experts into country, laments lack of promised cooperation
The United States feels let down by a lack of transparency from China over the coronavirus crisis, a senior White House official said on Thursday.
“We are a little disappointed that we haven’t been invited in and we’re a little disappointed in the lack of transparency coming from the Chinese,” Larry Kudlow, the director of President Donald Trump’s Economic Council, told reporters.
“These numbers are jumping around … there was some surprise,” he added.
Beijing on Wednesday announced a surge of 15,152 new cases because of a change in diagnostic criteria. The new criteria included a “clinical diagnosis” of cases, using CAT scans by doctors in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located. Earlier updates had relied solely on the results of lab tests.
Trump last week praised his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for his government’s response to the outbreak, which has officially killed more than 1,300 people and infected more than 60,000.
But Kudlow said that unanswered questions were mounting and there was no sign of the promised cooperation.