Donald Trump Warns China of Consequences Over the Virus Outbreak
Donald Trump, the US President, ratcheted up criticism of Beijing over its handling of outbreak and he warned China that if it was “knowingly responsible” for the coronavirus outbreak, then it should face the consequences.
Trump said, ” The whole world is suffering due to the virus which could have been stopped in China before it started, and it was not stopped.”
Experts say that this is the time when an unprecedented level of cooperation is needed to deal with the coronavirus crisis, however, the war of words between the world’s two biggest economies shows increased strains in relations now.
Trump said, “There surely should be consequences if they were knowingly responsible, and if it was a mistake, then a mistake is a mistake.”
China has been accused of a lack of transparency after the coronavirus broke out in its city of Wuhan late last year, by Trump and senior aides. The aid to the World Health Organization was suspended by Trump as he accused it of being “China-centric,” this week.
Over the virus, Beijing and Washington have sparred in public repeatedly. Initially, for the response from China and his
counterpart Xi Jinping, Trump had lavished praised them. However, in recent days, he and other senior officials have ramped up their rhetoric and also referred to it as the “Chinese virus.”Some Chinese officials had earlier made attempts to blame the origin of the virus on the US military, and Trump has angrily rejected these attempts.
China must still come clean on what happened though it performed badly at the outset, said Trump’s domestic critics. However, at the same time, the potential backlash if tension got too heated is kept in mind by the White House officials. American medical workers are desperately in need of personal protection equipment and for these, the US is heavily reliant on China.
Trump, citing a multi-billion agricultural agreement aimed at defusing a bitter trade war, said that the U.S.-China relationship had been good until recently, but then you hear about this all of a sudden.”
He said that the information on what happened with the coronavirus was “a mistake that got out of control, or was it done deliberately,” is the question now and said that the Chinese were “embarrassed.”
He added saying, “between those two, there is a big difference.”
WUHAN LAB
A Wuhan virology laboratory has been in the news lately as Trump raised questions about China’s effort to demonstrate its capacity to identify and combat viruses and the lab likely developing the coronavirus. To know whether the virus emanated from a Chinese lab, Trump’s government is seeking to determine the possibilities.
The Chinese state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology has dismissed all the rumors as far back as February, about the virus being synthesized artificially at one of its labs or maybe could have escaped from the lab.
Trump also cast doubt again on China’s death toll, which on Friday, was revised up. China said that the number of people who died due to Covid-19 in Wuhan was 1,300, half of the total were not counted, but dismissed allegations of a cover-up.
With more than 720,000 infections and over 37,000 deaths, the US has the world’s largest number of confirmed coronavirus cases so far.
The coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force who has steered clear of political aspects of Trump’s contentions briefings, Dr. Deborah Birx also questioned the data from China.
She said China had a “moral obligation” to provide credible information and called China’s numbers unrealistic showing on a chart that China’s death rate per 100,000 people was far below major European countries and the United States.
