Accusations are flying between U.S. and Chinese officials over how each country is handling the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Wednesday that the Chinese Communist Party has a "responsibility to tell the world how this pandemic got out of China and all across the world, causing such global economic devastation.”
The comments came after China Central Television's top evening news program questioned the accuracy of U.S. data tracking of COVID-19 infections, singling out Pompeo for “turning himself into the common enemy of mankind.”
Underlying the heated exchange is an effort by the U.S. State Department to better understand the origins of the outbreak in Wuhan.
"It's not even about the blame game," Morgan Ortagus, a spokesperson for the department, told Cheddar. "It's about us not being able to answer fundamental questions about this pandemic."
She said the agency is focused on "making sure the world has the data and the transparency that it needs, not only from the Chinese Communist Party but also from Iran, North Korea, other places."
Specifically, the department wants to confirm China's claim that the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market by sending in independent scientists to assess the data. Ortagus compared the process to the common practice of getting studies peer-reviewed by a credible source.
"It doesn't matter if it's Americans, by the way," Ortagus said. "We're happy if it's Germans, or French, or British scientists that want to go in, but no one is being allowed to go into Wuhan to investigate."
Other global leaders, including Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, have called on China to allow an international investigation into the source of coronavirus.
In addition, the State Department is doing a 60 to 90-day review of the World Health Organization to determine "what information they have and don't have," she said.
"Everything that we're doing right now boils down to this: how do we prevent a pandemic of this scale from ever happening again?" Ortagus said. "We know that we can't answer that question until we get the live virus samples, until we have independent, credible scientists and doctors who are able to go into the Wuhan, into the wet markets, into the laboratories, to understand what caused this pandemic."
U.S. intelligence agencies also revealed that they are following up on speculation amplified by the White House that the pandemic may have spread from a lab accident in Wuhan, while also acknowledging that the virus appeared "not manmade or genetically modified."
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