As the world grapples with coronavirus pandemic with over 2.4 lakh deaths reported worldwide on Monday, the United States continues to blame China for its lack of controlling the virus.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that there was “enormous evidence” that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. “There is enormous evidence that this is where it began,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
While being highly critical of China’s handling of the matter, Pompeo declined to say whether he thought the virus had been intentionally released.
President Donald Trump has been increasingly critical of China’s role in the pandemic, which has infected nearly 3.5 million people and killed more than 240,000 around the world. He has insisted that Beijing recklessly concealed important information about the outbreak and demanded that Beijing be held “accountable.”
Trump also expressed his wish to send a team of investigators to look into the origins of the virus in China.
Pompeo, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told ABC that he agreed with a statement made on Thursday from the US intelligence community in which it concurred “with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified.”
But he went further than Trump as he said, “I think the whole world can see now, remember, China has a history of infecting the world and running substandard laboratories,” Pompeo said. He said early Chinese efforts to downplay the coronavirus amounted to “a classic Communist disinformation effort. That created enormous risk.” “President Trump is very clear: we’ll hold those responsible accountable.”
US has emerged as one of the worst-hit countries amidst the pandemic both medically and economically. Over 1,158,341 have been infected in the country.
Meanwhile, an intelligence report by US Department of Homeland Security, obtained by news agency AP, claims China covered up the extent of the coronavirus outbreak and how contagious the disease is to stock up on medical supplies needed to respond to it. Chinese leaders intentionally concealed the severity of the pandemic from the world in early January, according to a four-page report dated May 1.