COVID-19 Originated From Lab In China, Insists Trump

Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, has insisted that the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) originated from a laboratory in China and not from animals.
Speaking at a press briefing at the White House on Thursday, President Trump said he had evidence to support his claims that the virus was created at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, the city where COVID-19 emerged from. in December 2019.
“Yes, I have. Yes, I have. And I think the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they’re like the public relations agency for China.” the US President responded to a reporter’s question.
Asked later to clarify his comment, he said: “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
President Trump also wondered why Chinese citizens were allowed entry into different countries across the world while their own country implemented a strict lockdown measure as part of efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19.
He said: “Whether they [China] made a mistake, or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose?
“I don’t understand how traffic, how people weren’t allowed into the rest of China, but they were allowed into the rest of the world. That’s a bad, that’s a hard question for them to answer.”
Senior White House officials have asked the US intelligence community to investigate whether the virus came from a Wuhan research laboratory, the New York Times reports.
Intelligence agencies have also been tasked with determining if China and the WHO withheld information about the virus early on, unnamed officials told NBC News.
However, in a rare public statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees US spy agencies, said on Thursday it concurs with the “wide scientific consensus” regarding Covid-19’s natural origins.
“The [intelligence community] will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
China has on a number of occasions rejected the lab theory and criticised the US response to COVID-19.
Since emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of last year, the coronavirus is confirmed to have infected 3.2 million people worldwide and killed more than 230,000.