CCP Withheld Pandemic-Relevant Data From Public, Leaked Documents Reveal

A guard wearing a protective gear at the entrance of the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention as members of the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of COVID-19 visit Wuhan on Feb. 1, 2021. (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP) Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images

Internal documents that were leaked to The Epoch Times show that the Chinese communist regime has a large amount of data on influenza and other diseases that have symptoms similar to COVID-19, but hasn’t disclosed it to the outside world.

Since completing an investigation into the origins of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, experts on the team assigned by the WHO have complained about the Chinese regime’s refusal to provide the related data.

Dominic Dwyer, a member of the WHO expert team and an Australian infectious disease expert, said that when the WHO expert team conducted an investigation into the source of the epidemic in Wuhan, the CCP refused to provide raw data of 174 COVID-19 patients in the early stages of the outbreak, The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 12.

The CCP also refused to provide data on pneumonia patients who may have been infected by the virus earlier than December 2019.

According to the report, the CCP only provided influenza surveillance data from before December 2019 from one children’s hospital and one general hospital. The report cites WHO experts who said that one of the reasons for the regime’s refusal to provide COVID-19 origin tracing data is its lack of early influenza data.

Flu Data

However, The Epoch Times recently obtained a number of internal documents issued in 2019 and 2020 by the Chinese regime’s health departments and centers for disease control that hadn’t been disclosed to the public. It’s unclear if this information was provided to the WHO.

In a response to a query from The Epoch Times, a spokesperson for the WHO said the body was “awaiting the full report of the international team that will have more details.”

The documents recorded sharp increases in influenza cases and clustered fever outbreaks of an unidentified pathogen, as well as a large cache of influenza monitoring data collected by the regime.

One of the documents is the 12th issue of the “Infectious Disease Epidemic Information” report of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Meihekou City in Jilin Province, published in December 2019.

It reports: “This month, 234 cases [of influenza] were reported, with an incidence rate of 40.70/100,000, an increase of 11600.00% compared with the previous month. An increase of 46.25% when compared with the same period in the previous year.”

Screenshot of “Infectious Disease Epidemic Information” of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Meihekou City in Jilin Province. Provided to The Epoch Times.

Screenshot of “Infectious Disease Epidemic Information” of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Meihekou City in Jilin Province. Provided to The Epoch Times

Another document is a report of recent influenza prevention and control recommendations issued by the Beijing Chaoyang District Public Health Management Committee on Dec. 6, 2019. It revealed an increase in infections in Chaoyang district between Sept. 1, 2019, and Dec. 5, 2019. During those three months, there were four outbreaks of fever in clusters, of which one was an adenovirus outbreak, one was caused by parainfluenza, and the other two had “no common respiratory pathogens detected.”

Screenshot of "The Report of Recent Influenza Epidemic Situation and Prevention and Control Recommendations" issued by Beijing Chaoyang District Public Health Management Committee. Provided to The Epoch Times

In February 2020, CCP leader Xi Jinping inspected the epidemic prevention work in Chaoyang district, where multiple outbreaks of COVID-19 occurred that year.

Previous Investigations

On Feb. 26, 2020, the Hebei Provincial Health Commission forwarded the “Letter on Requesting Cooperation in Tracing the Origin of [Virus] on Wild Animals” issued by the National Health Commission to the health departments of various cities in the province. The document required the forestry and agricultural departments to conduct epidemiological investigations on wild animals, and sampling and testing of environmental and animal samples.

Screenshot of "Letter on Requesting Cooperation in Tracing the Origin of [Virus] on Wild Animals" issued by China's National Health Commission. Provided to The Epoch Times.

It also required all the blood samples collected from the close contacts to be sent to the local provincial centers for disease control for safekeeping until they could undergo antibody testing. It specified that after other environmental and animal samples went through COVID-19 nucleic acid testing, the results should be reported to the local public security department.

Both the forwarding notice and the official letter on COVID-19 virus origin tracing from the National Health Commission are marked as “non-disclosure to the public.”

In December 2019, the Wuhan municipal government and China’s National Health Commission conducted several investigations into and took samples at the Wuhan Huanan Seafood Market, which the Chinese regime initially claimed to be “ground zero” of the COVID-19 outbreak. Afterward, the regime only announced that environmental samples from the Huanan Seafood Market tested positive, and didn’t disclose other information that could help with tracing the virus to its source, including the internal documents obtained by The Epoch Times.

A few other internal documents obtained by The Epoch Times show that the regime holds a large amount of influenza data and issued a secret notice at the end of 2019 to not disclose it to the public, including a document of “Daily Intelligence Meeting Minutes” from China’s National Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and to monitor reports of influenza issued by regional centers for disease control and health departments.

These documents reveal that in 2019, at least four sentinel hospitals in Wuhan were monitoring the influenza epidemic and collecting biological samples of influenza patients, who share similar symptoms with those suffering from COVID-19. The hospitals sent the samples to their collaborating laboratories in Wuhan for testing and preservation.

Long Tengyun contributed to this report.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated whether the information was provided to the WHO. It is unclear if it was provided to the WHO. The Epoch Times regrets this error. 

This article was updated to include a comment from the WHO.