Trump's NSA demands China's answer over Covid origin mystery: Wuhan lab or Wet-market?

In an interview with the radio channel, National Security Adviser of United States Robert O'Brien said that the burden is on the Chinese to explain where the virus came from. He suggested the possibility of the virus being leaked from a lab in Wuhan and sought China's clarification. "And we need to know if there was some sort of release. Accidental, perhaps," he said. 

"We don't know where the virus came from. Maybe it came from a wet market in Wuhan. Maybe it came from one of the two virology labs in Wuhan, O'Brien added. 

Meanwhile, blaming China yet again for the outbreak of the global Coronavirus pandemic, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on Friday said that the United States is working with other countries to make sure they understand that coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China. 

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Stressing that the burden is on Beijing to explain where the virus came from, Pompeo told in an interview that China knew about the virus by December 2019 and even after notifying the World Health Organisation (WHO), it did not share the complete share all of the information. He went on to say that China failed to comply with the international health regulations of the WHO. "China failed to comply with the most fundamental and international health regulations of the WHO and did a lot of things and we can talk about them at great length to cover that up."

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Trump warns China of 'consequences' 

Earlier, Donald Trump had warned China that it would face consequences if it was "knowingly responsible" for the spread of the novel coronavirus. Trump, has time and again expressed disappointment over China's handling of the coronavirus disease, alleged non-transparency and initial non-cooperation from Beijing with Washington on dealing with the crisis.

"If they were knowingly responsible, yeah, then there should be consequences. You're talking about, you know, potentially lives like nobody's seen since 1917," he told reporters at a White House news conference last week.

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