Prominent medical journal says Trump's WHO letter included 'factually incorrect' claim

The Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals, released a statement on Tuesday saying President Trump's letter to World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus contained falsehoods.

Trump posted a copy of the letter to Twitter on Monday. He wrote that his administration conducted a review that found the WHO made "claims about the coronavirus that were either grossly inaccurate or misleading" and "consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal."

In response, the journal released a statement saying this claim was "factually incorrect," as it "published no report in December 2019 referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China." The Lancet said its first reports about the virus were both published on Jan. 24 — one was about the first 41 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in Wuhan and the other focused on the initial scientific evidence confirming person-to-person transmission of the virus.

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Trump's accusations against the WHO are "serious and damaging to efforts to strengthen international cooperation to control this pandemic," The Lancet added, and it is "essential that any review of the global response is based on a factually accurate account of what took place in December and January."