 "Trump's White House blames China for COVID-19 origins, criticises WHO and US health officials")
On Friday, Republican President Donald Trump’s White House launched a COVID-19 website, blaming the coronavirus’s origins on a lab leak in China while criticising Democratic former President Joe Biden, former top US health official Anthony Fauci, and the World Health Organization.
The website also criticised policies such as social isolation, mask requirements, and lockdowns.
When Trump took office in January, he began a 12-month process of pulling the United States, the WHO’s single largest financial donor, from the organisation.
Fauci, Biden, and the WHO had no immediate response.
Soon after taking office, Trump also said that Fauci, who has faced threats since leading the country’s COVID-19 response, should hire his own security and ended U.S. security for him.
A CIA spokesperson said in January that the CIA has assessed that the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely to have emerged from a lab than from nature. The CIA had said it had “low confidence” in its assessment and that both scenarios - lab origin and natural origin - remain plausible.
China’s government says it supports and has taken part in research to determine COVID-19’s origin, and has accused Washington of politicizing the matter, especially because of efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsBeijing has said there was no credibility to claims that a laboratory leak likely caused the pandemic.
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