Mississippi sues China for $200bn for costs associated with the Covid-19 pandemic

The state of Mississippi has declared victory in its $200 billion Covid lawsuit against the People’s Republic of China - now it just has to work out how to get paid.

Officials in Mississippi must wait for a federal judge to determine if China can be forced to pay it the massive sum after it failed to show up in court in March and a default judgment was entered against it.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch sued China and other parties back in 2020, claiming the country deliberately hid information about the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Wednesday, the AG’s office dismissed the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, reported The Clarion-Ledger.

The suit alleges that China failed to fully share the dangers of the deadly virus as it tried to “corner the market” on PPE equipment such as masks as it spread across the globe.

“The Defendants engaged in a cover-up and a misleading public relations campaign, which included censoring scientists and ordering the destruction and suppression of valuable research,” the AG’s office said in a statement.

“Further, the foreign Defendants bought up the supply of PPE, committed hostile takeovers of U.S. factories in China to prevent them from shipping PPE to the U.S., and then turned around and sold substandard PPE to Mississippi at inflated prices - all while hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, including in Mississippi, began to get sick and die.”

Fitch claims China earned $6.2 trillion on PPE sales in 2020, while more than 13,000 victims died of the virus in Mississippi. The AG claims she can sue under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the state’s antitrust laws.

In March, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office said it was looking at seizing $24.5 billion in Chinese assets in the state to recoup damages in a similar COVID-19 lawsuit.

However, it’s unclear how Mississippi would collect any money from China, which has never recognized the lawsuit as being valid or the federal court as having jurisdiction.

Last month, the White House launched a website stating that the coronavirus came from a lab leak in China. In response, China made the case that the virus may have originated in the U.S.