“Epidemic broke out in various places, while China was the first to report the outbreak”; China denies the allegations raised by US

Beijing: China on Friday made audacious claims that the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in several parts of the world but it was reported only in the Chinese mainland, and that it was the only country that acted first. China seems to have absolved itself from all the accusations leveled against it of being responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people amid a worldwide view that the contagion originated in the central Chinese city, and Beijing kept it under wraps.

China also denied allegations leveled by the United States that the Covid-19 virus emerged from a bio-laboratory in Wuhan, and at the same time rejected claims that the virus emerged from a wet market in Wuhan from bats or pangolins before spreading to humans. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said during a media briefing in Beijing on Friday that “the epidemic broke out in various places across the world towards the end of last year, while China was the first to report the outbreak, identified the pathogen and shared the genome sequence with the world”. Coronavirus is a new strain of virus since more and more facts continue to emerge with each passing day. The US is the worst affected country with over 78 lakh infections and more than 2,17,000 casualties. China, with a population of nearly 140 crore, has reported only 85,000 odd cases and around 4,700 deaths due to the pandemic.