Coronavirus Latest: Republicans Call For Probe Against China, WHO Over COVID-19 Outbreak

Seems like Senate Republicans are ganging-up on China. Some, like Sen. Tom Cotton from Arkansas, vow to make China pay for creating the coronavirus in Wuhan and unleashing it onto the world. Cotton is the leading Senate proponent of this conspiracy theory.

Others, like Sen. Ron Johnson from Wisconsin plan to follow president Donald Trump's lead and defund the "China-centric" World Health Organization (WHO) for being a Beijing puppet. Still others like Sen. Rick Scott from Florida want both China and WHO to suffer for their sins.

Scott has secured a promise from Johnson, who's also the Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman, to investigate WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. WHO has long been in the GOP's crosshairs for its baffling tendency during the early days of the pandemic in December 2019 and January 2020 to seemingly act like China's propaganda arm.

The GOP has repeatedly condemned WHO for apparently endorsing China's false claim made in January that COVID-19 can't be spread by human-to-human contact. The world is now painfully aware that human-to-human contact is the only cause of the pandemic now ravaging the world.

As of 06:42 GMT, or 2:42 am Wednesday, ET, the United States reported 400,540 confirmed cases and 12,857 deaths, according to Worldometer data. The U.S. has the most number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world and the third-largest number of deaths. In contrast, China alleges it has 81,802 cases and 3,333 deaths. The world as of now has a total number of 1,432,686 cases and 82,124 deaths.

Senate Republicans are also blaming WHO for allegedly not taking a tougher stand against China when it was clearly withholding medical and scientific information that might have mitigated the pandemic earlier. They also claim WHO didn't call-out China for downplaying the severity of the outbreak when this became apparent in January.

“The bottom line is the WHO’s actions and China’s actions killed a lot of people," claims Scott. "We would have been way farther ahead if we believed in the first part of January there was a local transmission. And we would’ve gotten ahead on the testing. We would’ve gotten ahead on the protective gear. We would’ve gotten ahead on the ventilators. And so there are people who are dead now, and it’s all because China didn’t do the right thing and the WHO didn’t do the right thing.”

Scott also blasted WHO over its "work for Communist China" and called for a congressional investigation. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Jim Risch from Idaho Tuesday joined calls for the Senate to investigate WHO. He also wants to determine if the U.S. funding for WHO should be rescinded. The U.S. is the largest single contributor to the WHO budget. It provided $401 million in 2017.

Sen. Steve Daines from Montana is asking the State Department to conduct its own investigation into China’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic. Cotton calls for sanctions against Chinese officials allegedly involved in creating the virus that causes COVID-19.