Top Chinese health officials offered to brief U.S. counterparts on the “new coronavirus in Wuhan” in a closed-door meeting in early 2020, newly obtained emails show.
As health officials in the United States and around the world were scrambling to respond to the emerging COVID-19 outbreak from China, Lance Rodewald, a senior adviser to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), floated an offer to have an “informal discussion” regarding the new illness.
“I’m writing to explore whether you may be interested in an informal presentation/briefing/discussion about the novel coronavirus by Dr. Feng Zijian at a side meeting around the time of the February ACIP meeting,” he said in an email dated Jan. 23, 2020, sent to eight U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials.
ACIP is a panel of health experts that advises the CDC on vaccine recommendations. The panel typically meets at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
The same day Rodewald made the offer, the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus first originated, entered into a full lockdown. The virus had been spreading in the city and around the world undetected as the Chinese regime suppressed crucial information about the outbreak and delayed acknowledging for weeks that the virus could transmit among humans.
The regime was also stonewalling repeated U.S. requests to send experts into China and get on-the-ground data.
Feng was the deputy director for the Chinese CDC at the time. He and Ma Chao, an official with China CDC’s National Immunization Program, were preparing to visit Atlanta for another conference, Rodewald told CDC officials in the email.
“I think that most of you know Dr. Feng Zijian,” he wrote, describing Feng as the architect of China’s National Immunization Advisory Committee. Feng “has visited US CDC many times, including for 6 months during the H1N1 influenza pandemic and in 2016 during an ACIP meeting,” he said.
Feng was leading China’s investigation into and response to the Wuhan virus, Rodewald said. “As such, he knows pretty-much everything about the investigation and response, including the virology, epidemiology, clinical spectrum, and mitigation measures being taken over here.”
Because of Feng’s responsibilities, Rodewald cast doubt on Feng’s ability to make it to the United States, but wanted to gauge whether U.S. officials were interested in meeting him if he did. Ma, he indicated, was more likely to go.
The offer elicited a warm welcome from Anne Schuchat, then the principal deputy director of the CDC.
“If they visit we are delighted to meet on the sidelines of acip,” she wrote back hours later. “Together we can figure out who will be able to meet. Of course I remember Feng Zinjian well.”
Rodewald in reply said it was “great news” to see the “interest and willingness for Feng Zijian to meet at CDC.”
“Many, many thanks,” he wrote in the email closing.
The emails were obtained by The Epoch Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.
By Eva Fu and Zachary Stieber
