https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3135805/coronavirus-us-health-officials-dark-about-first-who-china
US public health officials were “in the dark” about whether their experts would be included in a WHO coronavirus mission to China early last year, according to newly released emails obtained by US outlet BuzzFeed News.
In one exchange, from early February, Fauci told the head of a prominent US medical journal that he had spoken “in detail” to the director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and that China was seeing a “low level” of asymptomatic transmission in its outbreak. He noted the conversation was “confidential”.
Months later, after China passed the peak of its outbreak and the US became a coronavirus hot zone, Chinese CDC director Gao Fu wrote to Fauci to express his concern over reports that the US expert had come under attack.
The emails also referred to a request from Columbia University professor and infectious disease expert Ian Lipkin to transport the “live novel coronavirus” from Hong Kong to his high containment laboratory at the university.
A February 13 email from Linda Fried, dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, to Fauci and Redfield, said Lipkin obtained approval from a US CDC official to import the virus, but that the university was considering “the risks and benefits” of the proposal.
It was not clear where the virus would come from, although Fried asked whether the virus could be obtained from sources including “China or Hong Kong [health authorities] or University of Hong Kong”.
The WHO mission to China that US officials were earlier “in the dark about” about did get off the ground in February 2020, and included NIAID clinical director Clifford Lane.