‘Come Clean’: US Presses China On Coronavirus After Lab Reports

Washington- The United States stepped up its pressure on China over the coronavirus pandemic with President Donald Trump saying his administration was trying to determine where the deadly disease originated from. At a White House news conference on Wednesday, Trump was asked about reports of the virus escaping from a laboratory in Wuhan, where the coronavirus first appeared. Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing that WHO officials “have said multiple times there is no evidence the new coronavirus was created in a laboratory”. This report and others have suggested the Wuhan lab where virology experiments took place and lax safety standards there led to someone getting infected and appearing at a nearby “wet” market, where the virus began to spread. Scientists are still trying to determine the source of the virus, although the broad scientific consensus remains that COVID-19 originated in bats and spread to humans via an intermediary host. On Tuesday, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that US intelligence indicated that the coronavirus probably occurred naturally, as opposed to being created in a laboratory in China, but that there was no certainty either way. A report published over the weekend blamed Trump’s halting action and infighting in his administration for causing the delay in the US response, resulting in more deaths. China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday the World Health Organization has said there is no evidence that the coronavirus that has infected more than 2 million people globally was made in a lab. Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian made the remark in response to a question about accusations the coronavirus originated in a lab in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the epidemic first emerged in late 2019. Zhao told reporters during a daily briefing in Beijing that the World Health Organization’s officials “have said multiple times there is no evidence the new coronavirus was created in a laboratory.”