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China could have prevented up to 95 percent of worldwide coronavirus cases if they had alerted the world to the increasing problem of the coronavirus outbreak earlier, experts have claimed. The 11-million strong population of Wuhan were forced into the pandemic’s first lockdown on January 23. Beijing insisted the lockdown bought the world time, but the evidence revealed on BBC Panorama shows that the virus had already gone global.

Professor Andrew Tatem from the University of Southampton studied mobile phone data from the Wuhan area, showing that far more people left than came in, thus spreading the virus.

He said: “If the same interventions that were put in place on January 23, were put in place on January 2, we may have seen a 95 percent reduction in the numbers of cases.”

Matthew Henderson from the Henry Jackson Society emphasised the failure to stop people leaving the city during Chinese New Year.

He told the BBC: “Locking down Wuhan on the 23rd is bolting the stable door when the virus is on its way overseas to become a pandemic across the world.”

Until January 18, China admitted to only 45 cases in the whole country, but the true number in Wuhan alone was closer to 4000, according to British researchers.

Professor Li Lanjuan, who had been on the team responsible for inspecting the ground zero Wuhan market, was the one to recommend a lockdown.

She claims the Chinese Government acted at the right time.

Professor Li told the BBC: “The lockdown was a grave decision.”

She added: “It was only made when we felt that the epidemic in Wuhan would threaten the entire country.

“So I think the timing was just right.”

The World Health Organisation was also interrogated over their willingness to believe the Chinese Government’s reports that there was no evidence of a virus.

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Host Carrie Grace accused the health body of being a “propaganda arm” for the Communist Party to spread it’s message around the world.

However, representative Dr Bernhard Schwartzland did not agree with the assessment.

He said: “I do not believe that the WHO was part of a cover-up or did not do its work to actually get information and give this to other member states to keep their population safe.

“Actually I think we were very transparent to publicise the information that we had.

“We did this repeatedly with what we knew.”

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