The ongoing war-of-words between the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US intensified on Monday (May 4) with the WHO claiming that no evidence had been provided by Washington to support “speculative” claims by US President Donald Trump that the coronavirus COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, China.
“We have not received any data or specific evidence from the United States government relating to the purported origin of the virus, so from our perspective this remains speculative,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a virtual briefing.
Notably, US President Trump has repearedly maintained that the coronavirus has originated in Chinese city of Wuhan and Beijing has failed to properly handle the outbreak of the highly contagoious disease after it first emerged in Wuhan in December 2019.
On Sunday (May 3), US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said that there is enormous evidence to suggest that coronavirus originated from the virology laboratory in Wuhan.
“We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now. Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories,” Pompeo added.
Meanwhile, a spy dossier with inputs from the Five Eyes intelligence agencies of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, has stated that China’s secrecy surrounding the coronavirus led to an “assault on international transparency”.
The coronavirus by Monday (May 4, 2020) evening infected more than 36 lakh people across the world with over 2.5 lakh dying after contracting the deadly virus. As of 10:30 PM IST on Monday, approximately 36,09,990 people have been tested COVID-19 positive and over 2,50,090 people have lost their lives due to the coronavirus, according to the COVID-19 data provided by Worldometers website.