US State Secretary Accused China of Concealing Coronavirus Data

Beijing has resorted to misinformation so that the world could not know in time about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the head of the US Department of State said. According to Michael Pompeo, WHO experts have so far been unable to get into the laboratory in Wuhan. The Chinese Communist Party "did everything it could" so that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus could "not be known in time". This announced US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo in an interview with ABC News on Sunday, May 3. According to him, official Beijing demonstrated a “classic communist attempt at misinformation” and “behaved like authoritarian regimes, withholding, misleading and using the World Health Organization (WHO) as an instrument.” However, United States President Donald Trump “made it clear” that Washington was “about to hold those responsible accountable,” Pompeo emphasized. The Department of State head’s statement sounded against the backdrop of the US National Intelligence the office of the director statement, made several days earlier in which China was named the origin of the virus. Moreover, the intelligence community agrees with scientists that the causative agent of the COVID-19 disease "is not created by human hands and is not genetically modified." The US intelligence community will continue to carefully review emerging information “to determine if the outbreak has occurred through contact with an infected animal or as a result of an incident in the Wuhan laboratory,” the document emphasized. The US State Secretary mentioned Chinese "substandard laboratories that do not comply with the standards." For the world "it is not the first time that to be vulnerable to viruses as a result of errors in Chinese laboratories," Pompeo said. According to him, neither the US experts, nor the WHO group were able to get into the laboratory of the Institute of Virology in the Chinese city of Wuhan. “We still do not have the necessary samples of the virus,” the head of the State Department summarized. SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has been detected in more than 3.5 million people in 212 countries and territories since its discovery in China at the end of 2019. More than 240,000 people have died from the disease consequences. The United States holds the first place in the number of infections and deaths.