Trump Not Buying China's Official Covid-19 Figures, They Appear Too Much On The 'Lighter Side'

China, the country where the coronavirus originated, is slowly getting back to normal. After months of battle with the COVID-19, the country partly opened to business as usual.

Reuters

The country has recorded 3,316 deaths due to the outbreak, but there have been reports of China fiddling with the numbers and that deaths could have been a lot more.

Now, US President Donald Trump has cast doubt on the accuracy of official Chinese figures on its coronavirus outbreak after US lawmakers, citing an intelligence report, accused Beijing of a cover up.

¡°How do we know¡± if they are accurate, Trump asked at a press conference. ¡°Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side.¡±

Reuters

Trump insisted that ¡°the relationship with China¡¯s a good one¡± and that he remained close to President Xi Jinping.

However, controversy around Beijing¡¯s transparency has strained ties, adding to bad feelings triggered by a conspiracy theory in China that the US military was to blame for the virus.

Republicans in Congress, pointing to a report by Bloomberg citing US intelligence, expressed outrage that Beijing apparently misled the international community on China¡¯s infections and deaths that began in late 2019 in the city of Wuhan.

Reuters

China¡¯s reporting has been intentionally incomplete, with some intelligence officials describing Beijing¡¯s numbers as fake, reported Bloomberg, which highlighted the classified intelligence document sent to the White House last week.

China has publicly reported 82,361 confirmed cases and 3,316 deaths as of Wednesday, according to a rolling tracker by Johns Hopkins University.

That compares to 2,06,207 cases and 4,542 deaths in the United States, the country with the world¡¯s largest reported outbreak.