Following mounting pressure from the international community to tackle the global coronavirus pandemic, which has locked down citizens and economies alike, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said that there had never been a cover-up and that cover-ups were not allowed by the Chinese government.

On Friday China’s Deputy Director of its Foreign Ministry Information Department, Zhao Lijian, made the statement at a press conference where the revision of the Wuhan death toll was released, supposedly correcting its cumulative death toll by 50% to 3,869 as the global community and countless pundits remain openly incredulous to China’s death toll, approach toward handling the crisis, and inconsistent reporting.

According to Reuters, Lijian told reporters that there had never been a cover-up at the crucial phase of the Covid-19 outbreak, and that the Chinese government does not allow cover-ups, despite a clear disinformation campaign when international authorities and reporters attempted to reveal the full magnitude of the SARS-like disease.

Whistleblowers early on had been silenced and threatened with reprimands, dissidents reportedly disappeared, and the World Health Organization parroted a possible non-human-transmission narrative at the onset of the pandemic.

China has also restricted academic research into the origins of the coronavirus outbreak, and, at one point, even blamed America for the crisis.

Rumors have surfaced speculating as to whether China abandoned their practice of harvesting the organs of otherwise healthy political or religious dissidents as they had promised in 2015.

A double-lung transplant performed on February 28 for a coronavirus patient whose lungs were wrecked by the disease drew much skepticism as to whether the organs were ethically sourced. Some believed that, given the short amount of time–five days–between locating a healthy viable donor who had recently deceased, and, the time it took to find them out of a relatively small pool of voluntary donors, would be a statistical anomaly for all factors to take place.

The Western World continues to look askance at China after their actions–in addition to mulling over the prospect of potential economic reparations for the damage caused by the global pandemic.