Critics slammed the move, calling it racist and potentially inciting a backlash against the Asian-American community.
The clash came on the day that the World Health Organisation said more cases and deaths had been reported in the rest of the world than in China, where the new coronavirus virus was first detected late last year. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a phone call he initiated with top Chinese official Yang Jiechi, voiced anger that Beijing has used official channels “to shift blame for COVID-19 to the United States,” the State Department said.
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, in tweets last week in both Mandarin and English, suggested that “patient zero” in the global pandemic may have come from the United States — not the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan.
Also read: Trump claims coronavirus pandemic could end in US by July
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