The coronavirus pandemic which started in the Hubei province of China has caused US China relations to go sour as President Donald Trump continues to call it a ‘Chinese virus’ and China continues to peddle propaganda blaming US to start the virus in their country.

President Donald Trump on said Sunday that he is “upset” with China over  lack of cooperation and information early on in the coronavirus crisis which has claimed more than 415 lives in the US. “They should have told us about this,” Trump told a regular press conference at the White House.

Advertisement

“I’m a little upset with China. I’ll be honest with you…, as much as I like President Xi and as much as I respect the country and admire the country,” he said.

The diplomatic relation between the two economic powers continues after China expelled 13 US journalists from major publications, a move which was in retaliation of Washington’s imposed restrictions on staff at Chinese state media outlets in US.

President Trump on Sunday said he had ordered the deployment of emergency medical stations with capacity of 4,000 hospital beds to coronavirus hotspots around the United States. Trump told a news conference that he had told the FEMA emergency management agency to set up the medical stations in New York, California and Washington state.

He said eight stations in California would have 2,000 beds and that four stations for both New York and Washington state would have a total of 1,000 beds each. “I want to assure the American people that we’re doing everything we can each day to confront and ultimately defeat this horrible invisible enemy,” he said.

“We’re at war, in a true sense we’re at war,” Trump added.The US has 35,224 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 415 deaths, according to a running tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Trump said he had approved a request to issue a major disaster declaration for the state of New York, which has seen the vast majority of America’s coronavirus cases. He added that he had approved one for Washington state as well and would do the same for California “very shortly.”

Trump told reporters during his now-daily White House briefing on the pandemic that the federal government would pay for National Guard soldiers to be deployed in the three states to help contain the spread of the virus.

He added that the US Army Corps of Engineers would help build the temporary medical sites in New York and that the US Navy hospital ship USNS Mercy would be deployed to Los Angeles.

As the global number of infected cases reach 341,722 with 14,765 dead, China now seems to have taken control of the deadly virus with zero domestic cases reported. However, 39 new cases were reported in the country all brought in from abroad. There have now been over 81,000 cases in China, and the death toll has reached 3,270.