An audit by con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans to be released on Mon­day con­cludes that Chi­na cov­ered up the ini­tial spread of coro­n­avirus while the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion “par­rot­ed” Chi­nese propaganda.Various U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials and agen­cies have already alleged that Chi­na hid the extent and sever­i­ty of coro­n­avirus fol­low­ing its appear­ance in the city of Wuhan in late Decem­ber, and Repub­li­cans have accused the WHO of kow­tow­ing to Chi­nese assess­ments of the out­break. The Mon­day report by Repub­li­can mem­bers of the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, which was obtained by Nation­al Review, rep­re­sents one of the most com­pre­hen­sive attempts to delin­eate respon­si­bil­i­ty for the pandemic.“It is beyond doubt that the [Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty] active­ly engaged in a cov­er-up designed to obfus­cate data, hide rel­e­vant pub­lic health infor­ma­tion, and sup­press doc­tors and jour­nal­ists who attempt­ed to warn the world,” the report states. “Research shows the CCP could have reduced the num­ber of cas­es in Chi­na by up to 95 per­cent had it ful­filled its oblig­a­tions under inter­na­tion­al law and respond­ed to the out­break in a man­ner con­sis­tent with best practices.“In par­tic­u­lar, the report notes, “as ear­ly as mid-Decem­ber [2019], and no lat­er than Decem­ber 27th, the CCP had enough infor­ma­tion to assess it was legal­ly oblig­at­ed to inform the WHO that the out­break in Wuhan was an event ‘that may con­sti­tute a Pub­lic Health Emer­gency of Inter­na­tion­al Con­cern.’ ”The WHO accept­ed Chi­nese pro­pa­gan­da regard­ing the out­break, effec­tive­ly mis­in­form­ing oth­er nations on the spread of coro­n­avirus. Addi­tion­al­ly, Chi­na nation­al­ized var­i­ous pro­duc­tion lines of med­ical equip­ment, seiz­ing con­trol of the med­ical sup­ply chains of oth­er nations.“According to the Con­gres­sion­al Research Ser­vice (CRS), [the] nation­al­ized con­trol of the med­ical sup­ply chain includ­ed ‘commandeer[ing] med­ical man­u­fac­tur­ing and logis­tics down to the fac­to­ry lev­el,’ ” the report states. “It is high­ly like­ly that China’s nation­al­iza­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­i­ty of for­eign com­pa­nies, includ­ing 3M and Gen­er­al Motors, direct­ly impact­ed the abil­i­ty of the Unit­ed States and oth­er coun­tries to pro­cure [per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment] on the glob­al market.“Representative Michael McCaul (R., Texas), the rank­ing Repub­li­can on the Demo­c­rat-led For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, has been a vocal crit­ic of Chi­na and the WHO through­out the pan­dem­ic. McCaul deemed the Chi­nese response to the coro­n­avirus “one of the worst cov­er-ups in human his­to­ry” in mid-March.