TAXPAYER FIRST ACT OF 2019--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, on Wednesday, June 3, this year, the Associated Press released an article detailing China's stonewalling and delay tactics in withholding crucial data from the World Health Organization. That information that was held was about the novel coronavirus that caused COVID-19.

Now, this article gives us a glimpse behind the scenes of the World Health Organization, and there are a lot of questions raised about the World Health Organization today in regard to their relationship with China. The political leaders at WHO pursued a strategy of placating China in a seemingly haphazard attempt to coax China's leader into cooperating more fully.

Now, despite red flags raised by medical experts within the organization about the lack of data coming out of China and also serious doubts about the Chinese Government's claim that human-to-human transmission was not of any concern, WHO leadership, through all of that, continued lauding China's approach and transparency on this whole virus issue.

Many career officials openly voiced their frustration with how the World Health Organization leadership lacked the willingness to push China to hand over vital information about the virus. Remember, the World Health Organization did publicly push China when it withheld information on the SARS outbreak in 2003 but didn't seem to be as interested pushing China as much this time.

The Chinese Government then refused to share data about COVID-19 test results that would have allowed researchers around the world to make independent assessments of the virus's spread.

Now, weeks passed before the Chinese Government allowed the World Health Organization to see the map of the virus genome, and that genome was created by Chinese researchers. So they had the information where other people could start out to try to find a vaccine. By that time, the virus was already spreading around the globe, which has led to countless needless deaths and immeasurable economic damage globally that now rests on the shoulders of the Chinese for that happening.

I am glad that the World Health Organization member countries approved an investigation as to how the organization handled COVID-19. I hope this will be a truly independent investigation that will prevent future mishaps.

Now, in the meantime, we already know enough about the actions by the World Health Organization management to warrant immediate changes. Politics must never again get in the way of those medical professionals in the organization who are actually dedicated to fulfilling the World Health Organization's mission to share accurate and timely public health information and at the same time save lives.

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