United States president Donald Trump on Thursday said he was confident the coronavirus may have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and threatened China with fresh tariffs.
Trump told reporters at the White House that evidence he had seen gave him a “high degree of confidence” the virus came from the institute: “Yes, yes I have. I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that”, he said.
When asked about reports that he could cancel US debt obligations to China, Trump said he could “do it differently”:”I could do the same thing but even for more money, just putting on tariffs”, he said.
The Chinese state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology has dismissed the allegations.
Last month, the US intelligence started exploring the possibility that the virus was accidentally released from a lab, after evidence emerged that the wet market, which China quickly blamed for the spread of the virus did not sell bats, and the first patient, as well as multiple other early cases, did not have any connection to the market.
A French Nobel Prize-winning virologist also said that it is obvious the virus was developed in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has specialized in these coronaviruses since the early 2000s. Various scientific journals have earlier pointed out that samples of SARS were twice leaked accidentally from Chinese labs before.
In March, China imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of Covid-19. Later, Wuhan authorities have revised the number of virus-related deaths up by 50%.
Trump also said it was possible that China either could not stop the spread of the coronavirus or let it spread. “We’ll be able to get a very powerful definition of what happened,” Trump said, adding that a report would be made to him in the “not too distant future”.
China has also threatened it could boycott Australian products after Australia has joined the US in calling for an investigation of how the virus transformed from a localised epidemic in central China into a global pandemic.
