US President Donald Trump claimed on Thursday that the coronavirus emerged from a laboratory in China.
On Thursday, the President expressed his confidence that the coronavirus sprang from the laboratory of Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
“I can’t tell you that,” Trump said during the White House briefing. A reported asked about the evidence he has that convinced him about the origin of the virus.
The laboratory is in the region where first coronavirus outbreak happened. The worldwide pandemic already infected over 3.2 million people.
However, the Office of Director of National Intelligence pointed out that the American intelligence community “will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence."
They aim to find out whether "the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
The New York Times previously reported that major Trump administration officials “have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory.”
This theory refers to the Wuhan laboratory as the point of origin for the outbreak.
“The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic,” The Times noted.
A reporter at the White House also asked the President about the origins of the virus. He answered, “You have heard all different things. Three or four different concepts as to how it came out.”
“We should have the answer to that in the not-so-distant future and that will determine a lot how I feel about China,” the president added.
Trump's evidence
Another reporter asked him if he had “seen anything that gives you a high degree of confidence, at this point, that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of this virus?”
“Yes, I have,” Trump replied. “I think that the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves, because they’re like the public relations for China,” Trump added.
“This country,” Trump stressed, referring to the United States, “pays them [WHO] almost $500 million a year, and China pays them $38 million a year.”
“They [WHO] shouldn’t be making excuses when people make horrible mistakes, especially mistakes that are causing hundreds of thousands of people around the world to die.”
However, Trump denied he was suggesting that the coronavirus was not naturally occurring.
“We have people looking at it strongly, scientific people, intel people," Trump said.
Another question pressed him again about the reason behind his claim. “I can’t tell you that," he reiterated.
WHO funding
Two weeks ago, Trump announced that the US would stop its funding to WHO.
He threatened to halt the funds and claimed that WHO was against his travel ban from China early in the COVID-19 outbreak. Trump later suggested that WHO “pushed China’s misinformation about the virus, saying it wasn’t communicable and there was no need for travel bans.”
“The WHO willingly took China’s assurances at face value, and they willingly took it at face value and defended the actions of the Chinese government even while praising China for its so-called transparency,” he said.
