China under pressure over COVID-19 origin
WASHINGTON: China has came under mounting pressure over the coronavirus pandemic from Western powers led by the United States, which said it was probing whether the virus that has infected more than 2.1 million people actually originated in a Wuhan laboratory. The new focus on China’s role came as the world wrestles with a crisis that has killed more than 140,000 people and created historic jobless numbers,
with Britain, Japan and New York extending lockdown measures.
President Donald Trump, who initially downplayed the illness whose US death toll has shot past 30,000, has been attacking China for weeks and appeared to gain support after a videoconference among leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told reporters there could be no “business as usual” with China.
“We’ll have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier,” said Raab, filling in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson who is recovering from the virus. French President Emmanuel Macron warned not to be “naive” in believing China has handled the outbreak well. “There are clearly things that have happened
that we don’t know about,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. COVID-19 first emerged late last year in Wuhan, with China saying it was suspected to have been transmitted to humans at a meat market that butchered exotic animals.
The Washington Post and Fox News reported there were growing suspicions the virus in fact slipped out of a sensitive laboratory in Wuhan that studied bats, blamed for the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2003. Neither outlet suggested the virus was spread deliberately. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said China should have been more transparent about the laboratory. “We’re doing a full investigation of everything we can to learn how it is the case that this virus got away, got out into the world and now has created so much tragedy-so much death,” Pompeo told Fox News. — AFP