China claims COVID-19 broke out across the world last year; China reported it first

By Team Newsable | First Published Oct 10, 2020, 12:14 PM IST

Refuting the widely-held view that the deadly contagion COVID-19 originated in Wuhan before turning out to be a pandemic, China has claimed that COVID-19 broke out in the world's various parts last year however, it was the first country to report it.

Beijing: On Friday China claimed that COVID-19 broke out in various parts of the world last year, but it was the only one to have reported and acted first.

China made these claims refuting the widely held view that the deadly contagion originated in Wuhan before turning out to be a pandemic.

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China, besides denying the US allegations that COVID-19 has emerged from a bio-lab in Wuhan, also rejected that it emanated from a wet market in the central Chinese city from bats or pangolins before infecting humans.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing that “The coronavirus is a new kind of virus as more and more facts emerge as reports reveal, we all know that the epidemic broke out in various places in the world at the end of last year, while China was the first to report the outbreak, identified the pathogen and shared the genome sequence with the world.”

Also read: US secretary says China has deployed 60,000 soldiers on India's northern border

Hua’s comments came in response to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s allegations of a cover-up by the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC).

The coronavirus crisis was infinitely made worse by the Chinese Communist Party’s cover-up, Pompeo had said in Tokyo at the QUAD ministerial meeting of the US, India, Australia, and Japan on Tuesday.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry statement was made as the World Health Organisation (WHO) was gearing up to probe the origin of the deadly coronavirus.

Currently the US is the worst affected country with over 7.6 million cases and more than 2,12,000 deaths.

China has reported 90,736 cases and 4,739 deaths due to COVID-19.

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