US President Donald Trump has said that he had evidence claiming that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan in China. He, however, provided no details to back his sensational claim. Trump’s claim came hours after he alleged that China wanted him to lose this year’s presidential elections scheduled in November.
Speaking to reporters in his press briefing, Trump said that coronavirus had originated in Wuhan Institute of Virology. He said that US authorities were ‘looking at it very, very strongly.’ Trump said, “We’re going to see where it is – we’re going to see where it comes from.”
When a reporter asked him if he had seen anything that gave him ‘a high degree of confidence’ on the Wuhan lab being the origin of the virus, he responded, “Yes, I have. Yes, I have and I think the World Health Organisation should be ashamed of themselves because they are like Public Relations Agency for China. And this country (the US) pays them almost $500 m a year and China pays them $38 m a year.”
In an interview with news agency Reuters, Trump had said, “China will do anything they can to have me lose this race.” Trump said that China wanted his rival, Joe Biden, to win the Presidential election.
He, however, said that he was confident of his re-election. “I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don’t think that they will put a man in who’s incompetent,” he had said.
According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 61,000 people in the US have died after contracting coronavirus.