WASHINGTON • US President Donald Trump says China should face unspecified consequences if it was "knowingly responsible" for the coronavirus pandemic.
"If it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake. But if they were knowingly responsible, yeah, I mean, then sure there should be consequences," Mr Trump said on Saturday. He did not elaborate on what actions the United States might take.
Mr Trump and senior aides have sharply criticised China for a lack of transparency after the coronavirus broke out in its Wuhan city. Last week, he suspended aid to the World Health Organisation (WHO), accusing it of being "China-centric".
Washington and Beijing, the world's two biggest economies, have publicly and repeatedly sparred over the virus. Mr Trump initially praised China's response to the outbreak, but he and other officials have also referred to it as the "Chinese virus" and in recent days have ratcheted up their rhetoric.
Mr Trump's critics say that while China performed badly at the outset and must still come clean on what happened, he is now using Beijing to deflect from the shortcomings of his own response. At the same time, however, White House officials are mindful of the potential backlash if tensions get too heated. The US is heavily reliant on China for personal protection equipment needed by American medical workers, and Mr Trump wants to keep a hard-won trade deal on track.
Mr Trump said US-China ties were good "until they did this". He said the Chinese were "embarrassed" and the question now was whether what happened with the coronavirus was "a mistake that got out of control, or was it done deliberately". "There's a big difference between those two," he said.
Mr Trump also raised questions about a Wuhan virology laboratory that Fox News last week reported had likely developed the coronavirus as part of China's effort to demonstrate its capacity to identify and combat viruses. He has said his government is seeking to determine if the virus came from a Chinese lab.
As far back as February, China's state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology dismissed rumours that the virus may have been artificially synthesised at one of its labs or perhaps escaped from such a facility.
Mr Trump also again cast doubt on China's death toll, which was revised up last Friday. China said 1,300 people who died of the coronavirus in Wuhan - half the total - were not counted, but has dismissed allegations of a cover-up.
The WHO said China's revision was "an attempt to leave no case undocumented" after medical services in Wuhan were overwhelmed at the start of the outbreak.
Dr Maria van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist who took part in an international mission to China in February, said the Chinese authorities had gone back over data from funeral services, care homes, fever clinics, hospitals and detention centres, and patients who had died at home, in Wuhan. "What they have reported is that the discrepancies in these cases were due to a number of factors. First is that the healthcare system in Wuhan was overwhelmed at one point. And some patients died at home," she said.
"Secondly, is that medical staff were delayed in reporting of these cases because they were focused on providing care for those patients and they didn't fill out the forms in time." She added: "I would anticipate that many countries are going to be in a similar situation where they will have to go back and review records and look to see did we capture all of them."
China yesterday reported 16 new confirmed cases on Saturday, the lowest since March 17. Nine were imported infections. No new deaths were reported. Despite the declines, the authorities are still on guard against a resurgence. Notably, the north-eastern Heilongjiang province has seen a surge in infected travellers.
The US has the world's largest number of confirmed coronavirus cases, with over 738,000 infections and nearly 40,000 deaths.
REUTERS
