US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has defended claims that there is evidence showing the covid-19 came from a lab in the Chinese province of China.
Pompeo boosted the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus pandemic was created in a Chinese lab in a combative press conference Wednesday.
In response to a question by a reporterabout the intelligence over the origins of the virus, the former CIA chief said,“Let me just, let me just put this to bed. Your efforts to try and find -- just to spend your whole life trying to drive a little wedge between senior American officials… it's just false.”
.@SecPompeo: "We don't have certainty and there is significant evidence that this came from the laboratory. Those statements can both be true. I've made them both. Administration officials have made them. They're all true."
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 6, 2020
Full video here: https://t.co/PQq80s8vt5 pic.twitter.com/vostlSBCWG
The US secretary of state’s claim is centered on a scientist allegedly exposed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
He also said Sunday that there is “enormous evidence” for the allegations.
“I'm not sure what it is that about the grammar that you can't get,” Pompeo said. “We don't have certainty and there is significant evidence that this came from the laboratory. Those statements can both be true. I’ve made them both. Administration officials have made them. They’re all true.”
US President Donald Trump suggested in a tweet earlier in the day that the White House coronavirus task force would not be dissolved.
“The White House CoronaVirus Task Force, headed by Vice President Mike Pence, has done a fantastic job of bringing together vast highly complex resources that have set a high standard for others to follow in the future,” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning.
Data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that the United States could see up to 3,000 deaths per day over the covid-19 pandemic by June 1.