Blinken admits Covid-19 'got out of hand faster' because of China
The secretary of state said the Chinese government 'didn't do what it needed to do'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday admitted that the coronavirus "got out of hand faster" because of China.
During an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" Blinken told anchor Chuck Todd that China "didn't do what it needed to do" in the early stages of the pandemic in response to a question about whether he believes China knows the origin of the coronavirus.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I think China knows that in the early stages of Covid, it didn't do what it needed to do, which was to, in real time, give access to international experts, in real time to share information, in real time to provide real transparency," Blinken said.
FILE - In this Feb. 4, 2021 file photo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the State Department in Washington. The Biden administration’s early efforts to resurrect the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are getting a chilly early response from Tehran. Though few expected a breakthrough in the first month of the new administration, Iran’s tough line suggests a difficult road ahead.(AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) (AP)
Blinken continued by saying that a "result of that failure" is that the the pandemic "got out of hand faster and with, I think, much more egregious results than it might otherwise."
Last month, a draft copy of a joint World Health Organization and China study found that the origin of Covid-19 likely stemmed from the transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal.
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Blinken expressed "real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it," Axios reported last month.
Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., in a letter last month called on Blinken to demand China give the United States reparations for the economic damange they caused with their handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
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"China must pay the burden and the cost endured by Americans because of their role in this pandemic," Banks wrote to Blinken.
"Preventing another pandemic is a goal that we all share, but giving China a slap on the wrist after it continued to lie to the world and heightened the severity of the current pandemic is only going to make that goal harder to achieve," he added.