WASHINGTON, March 23 — Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned. The American disease expert, a medical epidemiologist embedded...
Image of Dr Linda Quick via chinacdc.cn
Zhu and the other sources said the American expert, Dr Linda Quick, was a trainer of Chinese field epidemiologists who were deployed to the epicenter of outbreaks to help track, investigate and contain diseases. Quick left amid a bitter US trade dispute with China when she learned her federally funded post, officially known as resident adviser to the US Field Epidemiology Training Program in China, would be discontinued as of September, the sources said. The US CDC said it first learned of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia” of unexplained origin in Wuhan, China, on December 31.
In a statement to Reuters before the report was published, the CDC said the elimination of the adviser position did not hinder Washington's ability to get information and “had absolutely nothing to do with CDC not learning of cases in China earlier.” One disease expert told Reuters he was skeptical that the US resident adviser would have been able to get earlier or better information to the Trump administration, given the Chinese government’s suppression of information.
Azar told CNN on February 14 that he and CDC director Redfield officially offered to send a CDC team into China on January 6 but still had not received permission for them to enter the country. HHS oversees the CDC. Relations between the two countries have deteriorated since then, as Trump has labeled the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” — a description the Chinese have condemned as stigmatising. Last week, the Chinese government announced that Americans from three US news organisations, TheThe decision to eliminate Quick’s job came as the CDC has scaled back the number of US staffers in China over the last two years, the sources told Reuters.
Nevertheless, the infectious disease experts who spoke with Reuters said, the United States could use people like Quick with contacts on the ground, especially if fears of a second wave of infections materialises.
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