WASHINGTON – Congressman Vern Buchanan announced today that he has co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to allow Americans to sue China in U.S. Courts for damages associated with the coronavirus.
“From the very beginning, the Chinese Communist Party has been lying about the scope and spread of the coronavirus pandemic,” said Buchanan. “China’s deception has led to the deaths of nearly 600,000 Americans, more than 34 million Americans being infected and caused untold damages to our economy and way of life. U.S. citizens should have the right to hold China accountable in our legal system.”
A growing body of evidence now indicates that the virus did not come from animals at a “wet market,” but from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the only level 4 bio-agent lab in China. In fact, according to a Wall Street Journal report, a U.S. government national laboratory prepared a study in May 2020 confirming the plausibility of a lab leak. The report influenced a State Department probe into the origin of coronavirus, which concluded that three WIV researchers were hospitalized with coronavirus-like symptoms as early as November 2019.
Former Food and Drug Administration Administrator Scott Gottlieb previously estimated that up to 95 percent of coronavirus cases could have been prevented if the Chinese government had taken swift action and alerted global health officials of the lethality of coronavirus.
Specifically, the Never Again International Outbreak Prevention Act strips sovereign immunity from countries that have intentionally misled the international community about a public health crisis. For the COVID-19 pandemic and any future pandemics, U.S. citizens would be able to bring lawsuits against foreign nations in U.S. courts for civil damages.
The bipartisan bill also requires the President of the United States and leaders of the G-20 nations to formally investigate and report on World Health Organization’s (WHO) response to the COVID-19 outbreak and to make recommendations on actions to improve future pandemic response.
“The WHO is complicit in China’s coronavirus cover-up scheme,” said Buchanan. “The WHO needs to answer for its inaction in providing accurate information to the world about China’s role in the outbreak.”
Buchanan noted that the legislation also establishes an international surveillance system to help collect data, identify outbreaks, and provide monitoring on novel diseases. Should a foreign nation not report on disease outbreaks, the United States would have the authority to sanction and punish bad actors.
Congressman Buchanan has also co-sponsored legislation to freeze financial support to the WHO over its role in helping China cover up the coronavirus. Buchanan was one of the first in Congress to call for former President Trump to declare a public health emergency and to call for restricting flights into the country from China, the origin of the disease. In 2017, Buchanan proposed that Congress create a pandemic response fund to combat deadly infectious diseases.
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