China on Thursday came under mounting pressure over the coronavirus pandemic from Western powers led by the United States, which said it was probing whether the virus that has infected more than 2.1 million people actually originated in a Wuhan laboratory. The new focus on China’s role came as the world wrestles with a crisis that has killed more than 140,000 people and created historic jobless numbers, with Britain, Japan and New York extending lockdown measures. Visit our dedicated coronavirus site here for all the latest updates. President Donald Trump, who initially downplayed the illness whose US death toll has shot past 30,000, has been attacking China for weeks and appeared to gain support after a videoconference among leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told reporters there could be no “business as usual” with China. “We’ll have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier,” said Raab, filling in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson who is recovering from the virus. French President Emmanuel Macron warned not to be “naive” in believing China has handled the outbreak well. “There are clearly things that have happened that we don’t know about,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. COVID-19 first emerged late last year in Wuhan, with China saying it was suspected to have been transmitted to humans at a meat market that butchered exotic animals. The Washington Post and Fox News reported there were growing suspicions the virus in fact slipped out of a sensitive laboratory in Wuhan that studied bats, blamed for the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2003. Neither outlet suggested the virus was spread deliberately. Read: US officials warned of safety concerns at Chinese coronavirus lab in 2018: Report Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said China should have been more transparent about the laboratory. “We’re doing a full investigation of everything we can to learn how it is the case that this virus got away, got out into the world and now has created so much tragedy – so much death,” Pompeo told Fox News.Bid to ‘smear China’ Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone and called efforts to blame Beijing counterproductive. Xi called attempts to politicize the pandemic “detrimental to international cooperation” and Putin denounced “attempts by some people to smear China,” according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian – who previously outraged the United States by spreading an unfounded theory that US troops introduced the coronavirus in Wuhan – quoted the World Health Organization as saying there was no evidence the virus was produced in a lab. Read: US says China hid coronavirus outbreak extent, lawmakers warn citing intel report “Many well-known medical experts in the world also believe that the so-called laboratory leak hypothesis has no scientific basis,” Zhao said. Trump has also gone on the attack against the WHO, saying he will cut US funding for the UN body because it did not press China harder on initial statements that the virus could not be spread among people. That Trump offensive has drawn little international support. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose aggressive response is credited with limiting deaths in Europe’s largest economy, voiced “full support” for the WHO in the Group of Seven talks. Merkel “emphasized that the pandemic can only be defeated with a strong and coordinated international response,” said her spokesman, Steffen Seibert. Read more: China provoked coronavirus blame game with disinformation against US: Expert 21 mln drop in China’s mobile users may suggest higher coronavirus death toll: Report China ‘trying very hard’ in handling coronavirus outbreak: Trump اي استفسار أو طلب خاص بخصوص التوظيف يمكنك التواصل مع الابميل التالي – مجير الموقع : alturky28@gmail.com لطلبات التصميم او البرمجة التواصل مع : hamzalaabar@gmail.com