WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressman is calling on the State Department to urge China to investigate the disappearance of three Chinese citizen journalists who sought to expose the impact of the coronavirus on the Chinese city of Wuhan.

In a letter dated Tuesday, Republican Representative Jim Banks asked the U.S. government to seek a probe into the fates of Fang Bin, Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua. According to media reports, they went missing after taking videos and publishing them online including images of overwhelmed hospitals and corpses piled in a minibus.

“All three of these men understood the personal risk associated with independently reporting on coronavirus in China, but they did it anyway,” Banks wrote, alleging the Chinese government “imprisoned them - or worse.”

The Chinese Embassy and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

China’s Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she did not quite understand the accusation about the three individuals and that China has acted in an “open and transparent” manner throughout the virus crisis.

“I am so curious why these lawmakers are focusing on matters of other countries when the U.S. is facing such a pandemic. And what they said is totally based on trumped up messages and information,” Hua said at a daily press briefing on Thursday.

“They had better use their time to do something concrete for their people, save their lives, [and] protect their safety.”

The virus first emerged in Wuhan in late December, sickening tens of thousands and upending life in the industrial city of 11 million people in central China.

China’s censorship policies have come under scrutiny since the virus outbreak amid allegations from online critics and local media that they potentially obscured the seriousness of the outbreak in its early stages.

The coronavirus has now spread to over 200 countries and territories, with the United States having more confirmed cases that any other country.

For an interactive graphic tracking global spread of the virus: open tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.