NEW: White House orders intelligence agencies to investigate China, World Health Organization over early coronavirus response— a sign of Pres. Trump's new hard line on China amid questions about his own response to the pandemic.
"As the president has said, the United States is thoroughly investigating this matter. Understanding the origins of the virus is important to help the world respond to this pandemic, but also to inform rapid-response efforts to future infectious disease outbreaks," White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement Wednesday.But critics point out the U.S. doesn't need an intelligence review of WHO to find out what it knew when. U.S.
WHO's director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus again defended the organization on Wednesday, telling reporters,"From the beginning, WHO has acted quickly and decisively to respond and to warn the world." He didn't say whether the U.S. had submitted a formal request to China for such inspections, which would likely come from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to China's CDC. The U.S. CDC has not responded to a request for comment.Several of China's labs work with their counterparts in the U.S. and elsewhere, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which Pompeo has implied may have caused the outbreak by accidentally infecting personnel.
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