British foreign minister Dominic Raab says there will be a “very, very deep dive” into the coronavirus outbreak and “hard questions” for the Chinese Communist Party.
“There’s no doubt, we can’t have business as usual after this crisis, and we’ll have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier,” Raab told reporters on Friday.
Raab is filling in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he recovers from COVID-19. Johnson, 55, left a hospital’s intensive care unit last week.
The coronavirus also sickened the UK’s crown prince, Prince Charles, 71.
Raab signaled scrutiny of China’s role in the pandemic after President Trump suspended US funds for the World Trade Organization, accusing the United Nations body of circulating false Chinese data, leaving other governments unprepared.
“I think the one thing the coronavirus has taught us is the value and the importance of international cooperation,” Raab said Friday.
In some areas, Raab credited China.
“I have to say, there are all these questions about the outbreak, but also, we had very good cooperation with the Chinese in relation to return [of] UK nationals [at] the outset from Wuhan. And we have a procurement of things that we need. So we ought to look at all sides of this and do it in a balanced way,” he said.
Taiwan accused the WHO last week of ignoring its December warning about possible human-to-human transmission of the virus inside China. As late as Jan. 14, the WHO said “there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.”
White House coronavirus coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said at a recent press briefing that Chinese Communist Party data in January led experts to believe the virus was less contagious, akin to the related virus SARS, leading to less concern among health officials.
The UK has a larger publicly acknowledged outbreak than China, with about 110,000 cases and more than 14,600 deaths. Globally the virus has sickened more than 2.1 million people and killed at least 147,000.