The State Department chastised China’s ambassador after a Chinese Embassy official claimed the U.S. military planted the coronavirus in Wuhan, China.
Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell summoned Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai after China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian twisted comments made by a U.S. health official as evidence to support a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 is part of an American plot.
“CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!” Zhao tweeted on Thursday.
2/2 CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation! pic.twitter.com/vYNZRFPWo3
— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 12, 2020
Zhao’s tweet contained a video of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield testifying in Congress that some cases of coronavirus were identified in the U.S. after the first patient had died.
Stilwell gave a “stern representation” of the facts about the coronavirus to Cui, a State Department official told the Washington Examiner. The Chinese ambassador was “very defensive” during the meeting, the official added.
The Trump administration has repeatedly referred to the coronavirus in terms that relate back to where the disease began, using names such as the “Chinese coronavirus.” Zhao’s comments suggest that the Chinese government is attempting to counter the Trump administration’s rhetoric.
Zhao’s comments are a part of a general Chinese strategy to deflect from “starting a global pandemic and not telling the world,” the U.S. official said.
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, which has infected more than 137,000 people across the world and killed more than 5,000, a pandemic on Wednesday.
New government documents out of China claim to have found the earliest case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in a 55-year-old man from Hubei province.
The documents, which were seen by the South China Morning Post, show the man contracted the illness on Nov. 17, 2019, predating the World Health Organization’s first confirmed case on Dec. 8 and suggesting the disease could have spread undetected for weeks before serious measures were taken to mitigate the outbreak.
