China may have missed a crucial window for containing the spread of COVID-19 because of secret deals and cronyism that prevented widespread testing for the disease in Wuhan in January, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Chinese government officials made secret deals with three obscure companies that made COVID-19 testing kits at the early stage of the outbreak, the AP said. However, the kits proved to be unreliable and competing companies were prevented from entering the market, which left medical workers in Wuhan unable to measure or control the outbreak before the city’s lockdown on Jan. 23, the AP learned.

The report said that if intervention had come earlier, it might have reduced the number of cases by 86 percent. But during the key period between Jan. 5 and 17, Beijing’s efforts were hampered by the faulty testing kits, it said.

Millions of yuan were reportedly involved in the deals between Chinese health authorities and the three companies – GeneoDx Biotech, Huirui Biotechnology, and BioGerm Medical Technology – raising questions of whether bribery was involved, according to the investigation. The AP interviewed more than 40 doctors, employees of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), health experts and industry insiders, and examined hundreds of internal documents, contracts, messages and emails.

One of three companies involved is a subsidiary of a state-owned company under the direct control of the Chinese cabinet. The three paid the Chinese version of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) one million yuan (US$146,600) each through back-door connections to obtain distribution rights of the testing kits and relevant information, the report said.

Other companies wanting to join the race to develop test kits and increase healthcare capacity were discouraged because they lacked the endorsement of government officials. As a result, the testing capacity was greatly limited and many COVID-19 cases were undetected.

“Because you have only three companies providing testing kits, it kept the capacity of testing very limited,” AP quoted Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, as saying. “It was a major problem that led to the rapid increase in cases and deaths.”

GeneoDx Biotech is a subsidiary of the state-run firm SinoPharm, which is directly managed by China’s cabinet. It is engaged in selling medical equipment and developing testing kits.

As for BioGerm, its founder, Zhao Baihui, was formerly chief technician of the Shanghai CDC’s microbiology lab. Huirui’s founder, Li Hui, has been a long-running partner of one of the CDC’s top officials in charge of test kits, the report said.

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