March 24, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 58 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Pages S2013-S2014]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 SENATE RESOLUTION 552--SUPPORTING AN INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATION INTO 
  THE HANDLING BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA OF 
  COVID-19 AND THE IMPACT OF HANDLING COVID-19 IN THAT MANNER ON THE 
             PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES AND OTHER NATIONS

  Mr. HAWLEY (for himself, Ms. McSally, Mr. Cornyn, and Mr. Cotton) 
submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee 
on Foreign Relations:

                              S. Res. 552

       Whereas the novel coronavirus (referred to in this 
     resolution as ``COVID-19'') emerged in the People's Republic 
     of China and began to spread as early as November 2019;
       Whereas, by late December, dozens of citizens of the 
     People's Republic of China had fallen victim to COVID-19;
       Whereas, on December 30, Wuhan, China health authorities 
     identified, interrogated,

[[Page S2014]]

     and reprimanded multiple doctors in response to their 
     decisions to warn other Chinese citizens of the danger posed 
     by that new disease;
       Whereas, on January 1, 2020, the Wuhan Public Security 
     Bureau questioned 8 Chinese doctors who had posted 
     information about COVID-19 on WeChat;
       Whereas, on January 1, the Hubei provincial health 
     commission ordered laboratories to stop testing for COVID-19 
     and destroy samples of the same;
       Whereas, on January 2, the Wuhan Institute of Virology 
     mapped the genome of COVID-19 in order to inform development 
     of public health interventions and medical treatments for 
     COVID-19, but the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China withheld genetic information on COVID-19 until January 
     9;
       Whereas, on January 11, the Wuhan municipal health 
     commission insisted that there were no new cases of infection 
     by COVID-19;
       Whereas, on January 13, the first COVID-19 case outside of 
     the People's Republic of China was announced in Thailand;
       Whereas, on January 14, the World Health Organization 
     announced that the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China had seen ``no clear evidence of human-to-human 
     transmission of the novel coronavirus'';
       Whereas, on January 23, the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China began to implement quarantine measures to 
     stem the spread of COVID-19 at the same time as the disease 
     had already begun to proliferate throughout the world;
       Whereas, on March 11, the World Health Organization 
     declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, with 118,000 persons 
     infected and 4,291 dead in 114 different countries at the 
     time of the announcement;
       Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China 
     has argued recently that COVID-19 did not originate in the 
     People's Republic of China;
       Whereas the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's 
     Republic of China has alleged that the United States Army may 
     have delivered COVID-19 to the city of Wuhan in the People's 
     Republic of China;
       Whereas the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's 
     Republic of China has said, ``China's endeavor to combating 
     [sic] the epidemic has bought time for [international] 
     preparedness''; and
       Whereas a University of Southampton study found that 
     earlier intervention by the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China could have ``significantly'' limited the 
     geographic spread of COVID-19: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) condemns the decision by the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China to hide the emergence and spread of COVID-
     19 within its borders during the initial weeks of the 
     outbreak;
       (2) assesses that the decision by the Government of the 
     People's Republic of China to hide the emergence and spread 
     of COVID-19 during that period almost certainly contributed 
     to the rapid spread of that disease throughout the Indo-
     Pacific region, Europe, and the rest of the world;
       (3) finds that the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China should be held accountable for the impact, of its 
     decision to hide the emergence and spread of COVID-19, on the 
     lives and livelihoods of the people of the United States and 
     other nations;
       (4) calls for an international investigation led by public 
     health officials from the United States and other affected 
     nations to determine how the handling by the Government of 
     the People's Republic of China of the COVID-19 outbreak prior 
     to March 11, 2020, contributed to the emergence of the COVID-
     19 global pandemic; and
       (5) calls on the international community to--
       (A) quantify the harm caused, by the handling of the COVID-
     19 outbreak by the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China, to the health and economic well-being of the people of 
     the United States and other nations; and
       (B) design a mechanism for delivering compensation from the 
     Government of the People's Republic of China to all affected 
     nations for the harm caused by its decision to hide the 
     emergence and spread of COVID-19 during the initial weeks of 
     the outbreak.

                          ____________________