JEDDAH: The US renewed its attack on China on Wednesday for concealing crucial information about the coronavirus pandemic.
President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have both accused Beijing of failing to share data that could have saved lives before COVID-19 took hold.
“They knew,” Pompeo said on Wednesday. “China could have prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. China could have spared the world descent into global economic malaise. They had a choice but instead – instead — China covered up the outbreak in Wuhan.”
Pompeo said China was withholding virus samples needed for global vaccine research and rejected suggestions that Washington was being unfair to Beijing.
“They continue to be opaque, they continue to deny access to this important information that our researchers and epidemiologists need,” he said.
Pompeo’s criticism was the latest example of President Donald Trump’s administration criticizing China for its handling of the COVID-19 disease caused by the new coronavirus, which has infected nearly 3.8 million people and killed more than 260,000 around the world.
Critics believe the administration is seeking to deflect attention from what they see as a slow US response to the disease
Pompeo’s comment on Sunday that there was “a significant amount of evidence” that the new coronavirus emerged from a Chinese laboratory appeared at variance with his own comments last week as well as those of the top US general on Tuesday that it was still unknown where the coronavirus emerged from.
“Let me just put this to bed. Your effort to try to find just — to spend your whole life trying to drive a little wedge between senior American officials ... it’s just false,” he told a reporter, at times talking over her.
“Every one of those statements is entirely consistent. Every one of them. Lay them down together, there is no separation. We are all trying to figure out the right answer. We are all trying to get the clarity.
There are different levels of certainty assessed at different places,” he said. “We don’t have certainty, and there is significant evidence that this came from the laboratory. Those statements can both be true.”
China said it would invite international experts to investigate the source of COVID-19 when the virus was defeated, and accused the US of politicizing the pandemic.
“The purpose is only deflection of their own failure at this moment to curb the spread of the virus in the US,” said Chen Xu, Beijing’s UN ambassador in Geneva.
“Some of the American politicians, the mindset is a constant problem. They adopted an approach that is against anything from China.”
(With Reuters)
