China’s top virus warrior ‘shocked’ by US coronavirus death toll

America’s response contrasts sharply with 17 years ago when authorities listened to experts and contained Sars to just over two dozen cases, Zhong Nanshan says

Scientist unsurprised by persistence of conspiracy theories surrounding China and the new pathogen


Guo Rui in Guangzhou 26 May, 2020

More than 100,000 people have died in the United States from Covid-19. Photo: AP

In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with the Post, veteran Chinese infectious disease expert Zhong Nanshan shares his insights into the global battle to control the Covid-19 pandemic. In this, the second instalment of a four-part series, Zhong points to what he says is the US’ unwillingness to listen to scientific advice. The US death toll from
the coronavirus pandemic has shocked the scientist leading the fight against the disease in China, with the respiratory disease expert attributing the magnitude of American fatalities to a failure by policymakers to heed scientists’ advice.


More than 1.66 million Covid-19 infections have been reported in the US, with 98,226 people dying from the disease – the highest number of deaths for any country. In all, 5.49 million people have been infected globally and more than 340,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.

“Seventeen years ago, the Sars epidemic was handled so well in the US, completely differently from the situation now,” said 

Zhong Nanshan, 83, director of the National Clinical Research Centre for Respiratory Disease and the leader of a team of scientists advising the government.

“You can say that [the US] carried out very extensive screening or more screening than other countries … But the heavy casualties still shocked me,” he said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post.

Zhong said his counterparts in the US told him that the American system was ill-prepared for the epidemic, despite the country’s high level of medical care, equipment and facilities.

He said this was similar to the early response in Wuhan – the central Chinese city where the outbreak was first identified –  when many medical personnel were infected and died.

But the main problem in the US was the failure to listen to medical experts, he said. As a result, US President Donald Trump “underestimated the disease’s infectious power as well as its harmful nature. He thought it was a big flu.”

US officials also did not listen to medical experts’ views concerning the reopening of the economy, he said.

“Opening the economy quickly can be risky. I think they should follow the rules of science and reopen the economy step by step,” Zhong said.

Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has cautioned against businesses reopening too soon because of the threat of a second wave of infections.

Fauci, who is the government’s top medical specialist, has said repeatedly that “the virus will decide when the country is to open back up”. Some Trump supporters have attacked Fauci for these comments, suggesting he should be removed from the White House’s coronavirus task force.

“Of course, [the economy] is very important for any country, but this problem [of striking a balance] has not been handled well, and that’s another reason” for the pandemic’s impact in the US, said Zhong, who often has been compared to Fauci.

He said the US had stumbled this time, while it successfully nipped severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in the bud 17 years ago.

Zhong said he was in touch with US experts who went on high alert after Sars broke out in early February 2003.

“So they knew [what happened] in China. I told them that a contagious disease of unknown cause [is spreading] and they needed to watch out,” he said.

“Because of the strong preventive actions taken, the US only had 27 [Sars] cases … that is completely different from what’s happening now.”

The respiratory disease specialist also noted that Sars happened two years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, which had driven the US to strengthen its public health and emergency systems.

“After September 11, and as far as I know, investment in the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention increased by 10 times,” he said.

One thing Zhong said he was not surprised by was the spread of conspiracy theories related to the new coronavirus, recalling a visit to Seattle in 2003 where he saw a magazine with the headline: “Sars: China’s weapon for mass destruction”.

“I don’t find them strange, because they were always there, and they have just resurfaced again 17 years later,” he said.

Zhong said scientists from around the world should work together to defeat the coronavirus, but politicians had created obstacles to such cooperation.
Earlier this month, Trump said he had seen evidence that a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been the source of the disease outbreak, although he declined to elaborate. 

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated the claim, angering officials in Beijing, who threw their own accusations at Washington.

“We need to find out more [about this coronavirus]. It is especially important for scientists to work together to investigate at a time like this, and I totally support that,” Zhong said. “But this has become very difficult now because [some politicians] have politicised the issues.

“[Some people] have got this preconceived idea that China is the origin [of the coronavirus] and this has made it impossible to carry out research correctly.”

Zhong’s comments come as 77 US Nobel laureates have united to call for a review of the US National Institute of Health’s decision to cancel a federal grant for EcoHealth Alliance. The New York-based group has collaborated on coronavirus research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s leading research institute in the field.

Zhong said that while Wuhan officials had been slow in reporting the virus outbreak at the start, Beijing had been transparent in publicising information about the disease since late January.

“China shared the sequential analysis of the virus with the World Health Organisation on January 11 and reported cases every day since January 23 when Wuhan was put under lockdown,” he said.

“The rapidly rising number of cases in China after that served as a wake-up call to the world that this disease is very dangerous.

“Even if we may have been delayed, by January 23 our expert groups had given clear warnings that human transmissions had occurred and there had been infections among medical personnel. But the US only declared a national emergency on March 13.

“I really can’t see how this can be a cover-up.”

Read the first part of the series  here on why Zhong thinks the Hong Kong government should ease border restrictions to help revive the economy, and part three, about how
the blame game is affecting international scientific cooperation.


China's top virus expert criticises US’ Covid-19 response
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: China’s top expert on virus ‘shocked’ by death toll in US



Guo Rui is a China reporter covering elite politics, domestic policies, environmental protection, civil society, and social movement. She is also a documentary filmmaker, recording modern Chinese history and social issues through film. She graduated from Nankai University with a master degree in Modern Chinese History.