US president, Donald Trump has insisted that the coronavirus was synthesized in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan, China.
During a press briefing at the White House, Trump said he was confident that the coronavirus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
This follows after a reporter asked him
“Have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?”
To which Trump replied
Subscribe to our Youtube Channel:“Yes, I have. Yes, I have,” without further explanation
He said the World Health Organisation (WHO) is a sham for playing into the hands of China and acting like their PR machine.
Trump said they were investigating the origins of the virus from a scientific angle, but they were also employing other methods of investigation.
The president was however asked to clarify on his claims that the coronavirus was man made in China to which he replied
“I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees US clandestine and intelligence agencies released a statement on the matter.
“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,”
The general consensus at the moment is that the virus was not man made, but possibly originated from bats then to humans through an intermediary species.
WHO has also said there is no evidence that the coronavirus virus was man made.
Trump has been linking the coronavirus to the Chinese, at some point calling it the Chinese virus, a statement which left a bad taste in many mouths and was considered racist.
The president accused China of sabotage, saying they deliberately tried covering up the virus, if they had taken action early it wouldn’t have spread catastrophically.
Trump also temporarily withdrew funding for WHO, after he accused the organization for severally mismanaging and covering up Covid-19.
The US president has been under fire in the country for not taking the coronavirus seriously, during its initial phase, thus risking people’s lives.
