Russian President Vladimir Putin during a telephone conversation with President of China XI Jinping criticized attempts to blame China in the delayed information on the coronavirus, calling them counterproductive. His words are quoted press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, reports TASS.
Peskov said that the Russian side highly appreciates “consistent and effective” actions of China, which helped to “stabilize the epidemiological situation in the country.” According to him, Putin stressed the counter-productivity of attempts to blame China for withholding the truth about the infection.
“the two leaders expressed confidence that by continuing to work closely with each other, our countries will be able to successfully overcome associated with the pandemic challenges”, — said Peskov.
Previously an epidemiologist at the University of California Zuo-Feng Zhang in an interview with the Associated Press voiced the opinion that if the Chinese authorities informed the international community about the virus six days before, the infected would be significantly less.
“We could avoid the collapse of the medical system in Wuhan,” — said the expert.
In addition, in early April, US intelligence presented the White house a secret report about China concealing the true extent of the epidemic of coronavirus in the country. In particular, Beijing was suspected of underestimation as the total number of cases of infection and deaths from infection. U.S. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo has publicly called for China and other countries to be transparent in relation to statistics on the coronavirus.
An outbreak of coronavirus was first recorded in December 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan. March 11, the world health organization announced that the situation can be characterized as a pandemic. The total number of infected to 16 April exceeded 2 million people, from causes related to the virus-caused illness COVID-19 died more than 137 thousand people. In Russia, cov as of April 16, contracted 27 938, 232 patients with a confirmed diagnosis COVID-19 died.
