Supporting an international investigation into the handling by the Government of the Peoples Republic of China of COVID19 and the impact of handling COVID19 in that manner on the people of the United States and other nations.

Supporting an international investigation into the handling by the Government of the Peoples Republic of China of COVID19 and the impact of handling COVID19 in that manner on the people of the United States and other nations. Whereas the novel coronavirus (referred to in this resolution as COVID19 Whereas, by late December, dozens of citizens of the Peoples Republic of China had fallen victim to COVID19; Whereas, on December 30, Wuhan, China health authorities identified, interrogated, and reprimanded multiple doctors in response to their decisions to warn other Chinese citizens of the danger posed by that new disease; Whereas, on January 1, 2020, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau questioned 8 Chinese doctors who had posted information about COVID19 on WeChat; Whereas, on January 1, the Hubei provincial health commission ordered laboratories to stop testing for COVID19 and destroy samples of the same; Whereas, on January 2, the Wuhan Institute of Virology mapped the genome of COVID19 in order to inform development of public health interventions and medical treatments for COVID19, but the Government of the Peoples Republic of China withheld genetic information on COVID19 until January 9; Whereas, on January 11, the Wuhan municipal health commission insisted that there were no new cases of infection by COVID19; Whereas, on January 13, the first COVID19 case outside of the Peoples Republic of China was announced in Thailand; Whereas, on January 14, the World Health Organization announced that the Government of the Peoples Republic of China had seen no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus Whereas, on January 23, the Government of the Peoples Republic of China began to implement quarantine measures to stem the spread of COVID19 at the same time as the disease had already begun to proliferate throughout the world; Whereas, on March 11, the World Health Organization declared COVID19 a global pandemic, with 118,000 persons infected and 4,291 dead in 114 different countries at the time of the announcement; Whereas the Government of the Peoples Republic of China has argued recently that COVID19 did not originate in the Peoples Republic of China; Whereas the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peoples Republic of China has alleged that the United States Army may have delivered COVID19 to the city of Wuhan in the Peoples Republic of China; Whereas the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peoples Republic of China has said, Chinas endeavor to combating [sic] the epidemic has bought time for [international] preparedness; and Whereas a University of Southampton study found that earlier intervention by the Government of the Peoples Republic of China could have significantly limited the geographic spread of COVID19: Now, therefore, be it That the Senate (1) condemns the decision by the Government of the Peoples Republic of China to hide the emergence and spread of COVID19 within its borders during the initial weeks of the outbreak; (2) assesses that the decision by the Government of the Peoples Republic of China to hide the emergence and spread of COVID19 during that period almost certainly contributed to the rapid spread of that disease throughout the Indo-Pacific region, Europe, and the rest of the world; (3) finds that the Government of the Peoples Republic of China should be held accountable for the impact, of its decision to hide the emergence and spread of COVID19, on the lives and livelihoods of the people of the United States and other nations; (4) calls for an international investigation led by public health officials from the United States and other affected nations to determine how the handling by the Government of the Peoples Republic of China of the COVID19 outbreak prior to March 11, 2020, contributed to the emergence of the COVID19 global pandemic; and (5) calls on the international community to (A) quantify the harm caused, by the handling of the COVID19 outbreak by the Government of the Peoples Republic of China, to the health and economic well-being of the people of the United States and other nations; and (B) design a mechanism for delivering compensation from the Government of the Peoples Republic of China to all affected nations for the harm caused by its decision to hide the emergence and spread of COVID19 during the initial weeks of the outbreak.

Summary: This resolution condemns the Chinese government's decision to hide the emergence and spread of COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019) within China. It also calls for an investigation by public health officials from the United States and other affected countries into how China's actions contributed to the global COVID-19 pandemic.