Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “enormous evidence” exists indicating the coronavirus pandemic began in a lab in Wuhan, China and that the ruling Communist Party did everything it could to keep the outbreak under wraps.
“There’s enormous evidence that that’s where this began. We’ve said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China. We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now,” he said on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday.
“Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories. These are not the first times that we’ve had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.”
After the first cases were reported in Wuhan in December, Pompeo said Beijing began a “disinformation” campaign that “created enormous risk” around the world.
“China behaved like authoritarian regimes do, attempted to conceal and hide and confuse. It employed the World Health Organization as a tool to do the same. These are the kind of things that have now presented this enormous crisis, an enormous loss of life and tremendous economic cost, all across the globe,” Pompeo said.
There are now nearly 3.5 million cases around the world and more than 245,000 people have died from COVID-19.
Asked by host Martha Raddatz if he believed the virus was man-made or genetically modified, Pompeo cited “experts” saying it was man-made.
But Raddatz pointed out that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the scientific consensus is that COVID-19 was not man-made or genetically modified.
“That’s right. I agree with that. Yeah. I’ve seen their analysis. I’ve seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that that is accurate,” he said.
Pompeo said it still hasn’t been determined whether China intentionally released the virus or it was a lab accident.
“I think there’s a lot to know. But I can say this. We’ve done our best to try and answer all of those questions. We tried to get a team in there. The World Health Organization tried to get a team in there. And they have failed. No one’s been allowed to go to this lab or any of the other laboratories — there are many labs inside of China,” he said. “This risk remains.”