Dr. Fauci was contacted in February 2020 by woman with information from a Chinese nurse saying COVID-19 was far more widespread and there were more deaths than China was admitting
A woman relayed information to Dr. Anthony Fauci early in the pandemic that she said was from a Chinese nurse, specifically that COVID-19 was far more widespread and claiming more lives in China than its government was admitting.
She told Fauci in a February 17, 2020, email that she has been talking to a Chinese exchange student living in the United States who had been in constant contact with a nurse in Harbin, China.
The nurse had sent her pictures of an X-ray of an infected lung, a glass container of bloody fluid removed from an infected lung and a map of Harbin showing the outbreak areas.
'It is with trepidation that I reach out to you with information that has been shared with me regarding the real status of the coronavirus in China,' the woman said in her email.
'The written correspondence reveals that the numbers being released of confirmed deaths is drastically low due to the spread being too fast to test. Deaths in hospital hallways and of medical staff is not being shared in order to prevent panic.'
It is unclear who and where writer of the email is, and what her relationship is with the Chinese exchange student or the nurse, but she told Fauci, 'I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the correspondence that she shared with me.'
The student's name was redacted in the email. The names of the Chinese nurse or student also were not confirmed.
The writer said China has five levels of screenings before it is determined if a person is COVID-positive, and if they die before being tested, their deaths are not reported.
This photo taken on April 24, 2020, shows medical personnel taking swab samples of a man as part of COVID-19 pandemic measures, at a health services centre in Suifenhe, in China's northeastern Heilongjiang province
Workers in protective suits are seen at a registration point for passengers at an airport in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province bordering Russia
Police officers in protective suits are seen at an airport in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province in China on April 11, 2020
The situation is equally dangerous for health care workers, who don't have protective gear, the woman wrote to Fauci.
Fauci forwarded the email to a US health official and said, 'Please have someone respond to this person.'
The situation she describes is similar to what ex-CDC Director Robert Redfield described in an interview with Vanity Fair released Thursday.
Redfield told Vanity Fair that his CDC counterpart in China - Dr. George Fu Gao - told him about a mysterious new pneumonia, but assured him there was no human-to-human transmission.
At some point - the Vanity Fair story doesn't say when - Gao admits to Redfield that the virus is jumping from person to person but doesn't say how many people are affected.
He also says the exposure is limited to people at a Wuhan market, but the dire situation described by the woman is in Harbin, China, more than 1,500 miles away from Wuhan.
And the timing, February 17, 2020, is sandwiched between two milestones in the 2020 coronavirus timeline that were outlined by the American Journal of Managed Care, which is an independent, peer-reviewed publication.
Dr. Anthony Fauci received an email from a woman who said she has information from a Chinese nurse on February 17, 2020. The woman said China was underreporting the COVID-19 spread and the number of deaths
Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield and his Chinese counterpart Dr. George Fu Gao began talking about a mysterious phenomena in China in early January, which was later discovered to be COVID-19
A week before the email - on February 10 - the 908 reported COVID-19 deathsthat China announced exceeded the 2003 SARS outbreak in China, which claimed 774 lives.
According to the student's email, the actual number of COVID-19 deaths was likely much higher.
Eight days after her email - February 25 - the CDC said the COVID-19 outbreak met two of three criteria to be a pandemic: illness resulting in death and sustained person-to-person death.
It had not spread worldwide, yet. On March 11, when the World Health Organization officially declared it a pandemic.
Within the first week of March, a Westchester County, New York lawyer tested positive. Around the same time, 21 people of just 46 tested positive on a cruise ship carrying more than 3,500 people off the California coast.
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