US Senator Rick Scott accuses China of sabotaging vaccine development
The US is the hardest-hit country in terms of the number of coronavirus infections and deaths across the world
FollowLondon: The United States has evidence China is trying to slow down or sabotage the development of a COVID-19 vaccine by Western countries, Republican senator Rick Scott said on Sunday.
"We have got to get this vaccine done. Unfortunately, we have evidence that communist China is trying to sabotage us or slow it down," he said during an interview on BBC TV.
"China does not want us ... to do it first, they have decided to be an adversary to Americans, and I think to democracy around the world."
Asked what evidence the United States had; Scott declined to give details but said it had come through the intelligence community.
"This vaccine is really important to all of us getting our economy going again. What I really believe is whether England does it first or we do it first, we are going to share. Communist China, they are not going to share."
The coronavirus pandemic killed 749 people in the United States in the past 24 hours, according to figures released on Saturday by Johns Hopkins University.
The latest deaths bring the total in the United States to 109,791, and there have been more than 1.9 million cases, according to a real-time tally maintained by the Baltimore-based university.
Some 500,000 people have recovered from the disease.
The United States has suffered by far the largest number of both COVID-19 deaths and infections.
