Central China officials hid COVID outbreak from Beijing, report

U.S. intelligence agencies say officials in China’s city of Wuhan and Hubei Province, where the COVID-19 pandemic started, purportedly did not reveal the initial virus outbreak to the central Chinese Communist Party.

Officials in Beijing remained uniformed for weeks about the potential devastation of the virus, reports The New York Times. 

The outbreak started late last year. The information about the officials in central China is included in a new internal report by U.S. intelligence agencies, according to American officials who spoke to The Times.

The findings are consistent with news reports. The central China officials purportedly withheld the information for fear or reprisal. President Trump and other world leaders also have argued Beijing was slow to disclose to the world that a deadly virus was rapidly spreading across the country.