Day after US President Donald Trump cast doubt on the accuracy of official Chinese figures on its COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, former Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley on Thursday termed the numbers as “clearly not accurate”.
This comes amidst reports that the CIA has advised the White House not to trust the data being provided by Beijing.
“China has reported only 82,000 coronavirus cases & 3,300 deaths in a nation of 1.5 billion people. This is clearly not accurate,” the Indian-American politician said in a tweet.
Haley further said that China cares more about its reputation than helping the rest of the world defeat a virus that was started in their country, amidst news reports that the CIA is doing an independent assessment of COVID-19 figures in China and has advised the White House not to believe the numbers being provided by Beijing.
As compared to China, the number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the US on Thursday jumped to 240,000 and the fatalities rose to 5,800. The US has reported 2,36,339 COVID-19 cases, the highest in the world.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump had asked, “How do we know” if they are accurate. “Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side.”
Trump, however, 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.
According to China’s National Health Commission (NHC), a total of 81,589 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 were reported on the mainland, and 3,318 people had died of the disease as of Wednesday.
US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien told reporters on Wednesday that there was no way to confirm the Chinese figures.
“Unfortunately, we are just not in a position to confirm any of the numbers that are coming out of China. There”s no way to confirm any of those numbers,” he said.
“There’s lots of public reporting on whether the numbers are too low. You’ve got access to those reports that are coming out of the Chinese social media and some of the few reporters that are left in China. We just have no way to confirm any of those numbers,” O’Brien said.
A total of 10,02,159 COVID-19 cases have been reported across more than 200 countries and territories with 51,485 deaths reported so far, according to Johns Hopkins University data.