Top Chinese Officials Offered to Brief US Officials on COVID-19 in Closed-Door Meeting, Emails Reveal

A technician conducts tests for the H7N9 bird flu virus at the Kunming Center for Disease Control (CDC) on April 10, 2013. Chinese scientists believe new cases of H7N9 bird flu in East China may indicate the risk of a fresh outbreak of the virus during winter. ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

Top Chinese health officials offered to brief U.S. counterparts on the “new coronavirus in Wuhan” in a closed-door meeting in early 2020, newly obtained emails show.

As health officials in the United States and around the world were scrambling to respond to the emerging COVID-19 outbreak from China, Lance Rodewald, a senior adviser to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), floated an offer to have an “informal discussion” regarding the new illness.