Donald Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro has accused China of deliberately spreading the deadly coronavirus abroad.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing have intensified since the outbreak of the global pandemic with Mr Trump blaming the Communist nation for starting the virus. Now Mr Navarro has accused China of spreading the virus intentionally.
While appearing on CNN’s State of the Union segment, Mr Navarro was asked whether the Trump administration are preparing for a second wave of the deadly virus.
In his response, Mr Navarro claimed China deliberately sent “hundreds of thousands” of people abroad in order to spread COVID-19.
He said: “Of course. You prepare for what can possibly happen.
“I’m not saying it’s going to happen.
“But of course you prepare. I’ll tell you what.
“We’re a lot more prepared under this president than we were when China foisted this on us to begin with.
“China created this virus, they hid the virus and they sent over hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens here to spread that around and around the world.
“Whether they did that on purpose – that’s an open question. But that’s a fact.”
Last month, Mr Trump lashed out at the World Health Organisation for their handling of the deadly virus and claimed they were “China-centric”.
The US President also condemned the Communist nation for not alerting global leaders on the severity of the virus and said China failed to admit their mistakes.
He told Fox News: “We wanted to go in, but they didn’t want us there.
“Even World Health wanted to go in – they were admitted but much later, not immediately.
“They made a mistake, they tried to cover it, like a fire…They couldn’t put out the fire.
“What they really treated the world badly on, they stopped people from going into China but they didn’t stop people from going into the USA and all the rest of the world.
“They knew they had a problem, I think they were embarrassed by the problem.”
US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has also previously blamed China for starting the deadly virus.
He said: “There is enormous evidence that that’s where this began.
“I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.”
Wuhan became the epicentre of the virus as the first reported cases originated there.
However, since the outbreak, China has continuously denied they were the cause of the virus and claimed it came to the country from overseas.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention told CGTN: “It clearly indicates the virus strain is different from what it was two months ago.
“The virus strain is the major epidemic strain in European countries.
“So it is from outside China brought to Beijing.”
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