Mo. Files Lawsuit Against China Over COVID-19 Pandemic

The Secretary of State of Missouri filed a lawsuit against The People’s Republic of China, claiming the country is responsible for the coronavirus.

Eric S. Schmitt says China perpetrated a campaign of “deceit, concealment, misfeasance, and inaction” when responding to the COVID-19 pandemic within their country. 

The coronavirus lawsuit claims that China is responsible for the enormous deaths, suffering and economic losses that have inflicted the world and state they should be held accountable for their actions.

As of April 20, 2020, the lawsuit says that Missouri had more than 5,800 citizens test positive for the coronavirus and more than 177 people in the state have died, with that number increasing daily.

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The plaintiff claims that China has engaged in dangerous activities that have put the health and lives of millions of people at risk. The coronavirus lawsuit says that when China’s actions caused hundreds of thousands of people across the world to die, the country looked for ways to minimize the consequences by engaging in a coverup.

According to the lawsuit filed against China, one of the first known patients, a man who was affiliated with the Wuhan Seafood Market had symptom onset on Dec. 1, 2019. Five days later, the patient’s wife started to display symptoms of the virus, which showed that the coronavirus could be transferred from human to human, the lawsuit states.

In a study of patients that were admitted to hospitals through Jan. 2, 2020, it found that only 27 of them had a link to the Wuhan Seafood Market, which again indicated human-to-human transmission in December 2019, says Schmidt.

The lawsuit claims that part of the China coverup was the misleading of the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding the severity of the coronavirus in China. The lawsuit states that the Chinese Government delayed in reporting the coronavirus to the WHO for weeks after the outbreak was identified in China.

According to Schmidt, the Chinese Government had a duty to disclose any events that would constitute a public health emergency in its territory within a 24 hour period.

When they did inform the WHO about the disease, China denied any human-to-human transmission, even though it had evidence that there was, Schmidt says.

“Defendants’ denial induced the WHO to also deny or downplay the risk of human-to-human transmission in the critical weeks while the virus was first spreading,” the lawsuit against China states.

Towards the end of December, researchers at the University of Toronto started seeing the censoring of keywords about the virus on numerous Chinese social media platforms, the China lawsuit maintains.

In addition, in early January, the Wuhan police stated that they had taken “legal measures” against eight people who had published information online about the coronavirus, says Schmidt.

According to an article on ABCNews, U.S. intelligence agencies were warned about a contagion that was going around the Wuhan region as far back as late November.

On Jan. 6, 2020, the United States Centers for Disease Control offered to send a research team to China to assist them in their coronavirus efforts, but China denied them permission to enter the country, according to the lawsuit.

Schmidt declares that the Chinese authorities did not publicly confirm that the outbreak originated from a novel coronavirus until January 2020, even though it had a mapping of its genome showing that it was a new virus.

In addition, authorities in China did not share the genome sequence of the coronavirus with the international community until Jan. 12, 2020, states the plaintiff.

Also, the defendants continued to deny that the virus was transmitted from human-to-human contact until Jan. 20, at which point the Chinese authorities finally confirmed that human-to-human transference was occurring, according to the China coronavirus lawsuit.

“Weeks after the lockdown slowed cases in Wuhan, China continued to mislead the world about its knowledge of the nature of the virus, and on April 17, 2020, it upwardly revised the death toll in Wuhan by more than a thousand cases,” Schmidt goes on to say.

Schmidt notes that China continues to mislead the world about infection rates, fatality rates and other key information about COVID-19. 

“In addition to the toll on human life and health, the pandemic has caused enormous economic disruptions across the United States and in Missouri, with tens of millions of Americans and many thousands of Missourians filing jobless claims,” says the China coronavirus lawsuit.

According a CNN article, experts in the legal industry say that the lawsuit has an uphill battle because China has sovereign immunity over any international lawsuits.

The plaintiff is represented by Justin D. Smith of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.

The Republic of China Coronavirus Class Action Lawsuit is The State of Missouri ex rel. Eric S. Schmitt v. The People’s Republic of China, et al., Case No. 1:20-cv-00099, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

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