. At the same time, the US Secretary of State accused Beijing of obstructing Washington’s attempts to clarify the issue. The United States has no evidence of the artificial origin of the new type of coronavirus. This was acknowledged by U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on Wednesday on Fox News.
The U.S. foreign policy chief was asked to comment on Fox News allegations that the virus was allegedly transmitted to a laboratory employee in China by a bat. This employee, according to the above version, later infected other residents of Wuhan.
“We don’t know this or exactly where it came from. That is the main problem”, – Pompeo replied and accused Beijing of obstructing the US administration’s attempts to clarify the issue. – “When we tried to do so, the Chinese denied us access not only to the laboratory, but also <…> anywhere we could find the original source of the virus”, – the secretary of state said.
The Foreign Minister was skeptical about the opinion of former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the need to establish cooperation with China in combating the spread of the disease caused by the new type of coronavirus, as well as in the field of cybersecurity.
“President Donald Trump has a completely different view than [US] President [Barack] Obama and Kerry. It is about unfair trade relations, which President [U.S.] is trying to unravel, or cyberattacks against us, which we will not tolerate. We would like to find a way to work with the Chinese in all these areas”, – Pompeo said.
Arguing about the origin of the virus
An official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Zhao Lijian said that the version about artificial creation of the coronavirus is not supported by any evidence. Thus, he commented on the publication of the Fox News channel that the “zero patient” with the coronavirus was allegedly a certain laboratory employee in Wuhan.
The head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency of Russia (FMBA) Veronika Skvortsova stated that the version of artificial origin of coronavirus of a new type cannot be theoretically excluded. However, she stressed that “it is necessary not to guess, but to conduct very serious research”.
At the same time, World Health Organization (WHO) official Fadela Shaib said the WHO “is based on scientific evidence and believes that the origin of this virus is an animal”.