Amid mounting tension between the western countries, Australia on one hand and China on the other, US President Donald Trump promised a “conclusive” report on the Chinese origins of the coronavirus outbreak.
His latest remarks showed that the relations between the world’s biggest economies are set to remain strain at least until the next election six months from now.
Trump pledged the report in a “virtual town hall” with Fox News, in which he added that he had little doubt that Beijing misled the world about the scale and risk of the disease.
His remarks came just hours after Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said “enormous evidence” shows the Covid-19 outbreak began in a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, without providing evidence to support his claims.
“We’re going to be giving a very strong report as to exactly what we think happened. And I think it will be very conclusive,” Trump said in response to a question about the lab. “My opinion is they made a mistake. They tried to cover it. They tried to put it out, just like a fire.”
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the virus was not man-made or genetically modified. Washington has so far presented no evidence publicly that the virus came from a lab, which Beijing strongly denies.
This morning, British authorities said that China has questions to answer over the information it shared about the novel coronavirus outbreak, but refused to comment on reports that a U.S.-led intelligence consortium had a accused Beijing of a cover-up.
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “Every day I get intelligence bulletins from our agencies around the world. I don’t comment on inpidual bulletins, what I have and haven’t seen. That would be wrong.”
Asked if China had questions to answer over how quickly it made the world aware of the extent of the crisis, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “I think it does.”
“China needs to be open and transparent about what it leant, it’s short comings but also it’s successes,” Wallace said, adding that the time for a post mortem was after the outbreak.