US President Donald Trump raises doubts on China coronavirus figures
Washington : The US President Donald Trump on Wednesday raised suspicion on the accuracy of official Chinese figures on its coronavirus outbreak; this comes after US lawmakers, citing an intelligence report, accused Beijing of a cover-up.
"How do we know" if they are accurate, Trump said at a press conference. "Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side."
Trump insisted that "the relationship with China's a good one" and that he remained close to President Xi Jinping.
Though he mentioned that the reports of a conspiracy theories in China against the US military for spreading the virus have added a bad feeling.
Republicans in Congress pointed to a report by Bloomberg and blamed China of misleading the international community on China's infections and deaths.
China’s reporting has been intentionally incomplete, with some intelligence officials describing Beijing’s numbers as fake, reported Bloomberg, which highlighted the classified intelligence document sent to the White House last week.
Till April 1, China has reported 82,361 confirmed cases and 3316 deaths publically. While in the US, the total number of reported cases are 206,207 and 4,542 deaths; the US has the world’s largest reported outbreak.
Republican Senator Ben Sasse attacked Beijing’s numbers as “garbage propaganda.”
"The claim that the United States has more coronavirus deaths than China is false," Sasse said in a statement.
“Without commenting on any classified information, this much is painfully obvious: The Chinese Communist Party has lied, is lying, and will continue to lie about coronavirus to protect the regime.”
In a statement responding to the report, Michael McCaul, top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said China is “not a trustworthy partner” in the fight against COVID-19.
"They lied to the world about the human-to-human transmission of the virus, silenced doctors and journalists who tried to report the truth, and are now apparently hiding the accurate number of people impacted by this disease," McCaul said.
