Former US President Donald Trump on Saturday called on America and all the nations hit by the Wuhan virus to demand reparations from China for the damage caused by the virus, which is now almost certain, was leaked from the Wuhan virology lab.
Trump’s demand is backed by reports that a Chinese military scientist filed a patent for a vaccine against the virus much before the virus was declared a global pandemic.
Scientist Yusen Zhou reportedly filed a patent for a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus on behalf of China's People’s Liberation Army on 24 February 2020. He also worked closely with the deputy director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, known as the 'bat woman' at Wuhan institute, the reports add.
China, which declared human transmission of the virus only in January, was ready with the vaccine in weeks, suggesting that it was ready with the vaccine.
This also fortifies the news that Chinese officials have known about the virus much earlier than they admitted.
Speaking at the North Carolina Republican Convention, Trump said: "The time has come for America and the world to demand reparations and accountability from the Communist Party of China. We should all declare within one voice that China must pay. They must pay."
He also demanded that America immediately take steps to impose 100 per cent tariff on all Chinese products, to disable their military and move tech companies out of the country.
The former US President said he had a great relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping until the 'China virus'. He also said that China doesn't care much about current President Joe Biden.
"All nations should work together to present China for a bill of minimum $10 trillion to compensate for the damage they have caused and that is a very low number, the damage is far far greater. As a first step, all countries should collectively cancel any debt that they owe to China as a down payment on reparations," he said at the convention.
"Nations of the world should no longer owe money to China. China has destroyed so many nations... China should owe money to the nations of the world... These nations have been destroyed," Trump added.
Trump also slammed the Biden administration for being 'timid' and 'corrupt', accusing it of shutting down investigation into the origins of Wuhan virus earlier. "Joe Biden and his family took millions of dollars from the CCP. They bought him off, they fragrantly lied about it to American voters... the big tech and fake news media did not want to talk about it," he said.
Taking a dig at White House top medical adviser Anthony Fauci, he said: "Fauci said powerfully at the beginning ' no masks', you remember that? No masks, and then he went into masks and then he became a radical masker...but perhaps Fauci has never been more wrong than when he denied the virus and where it came from."
Trump’s call comes after an explosive new study has found that Chinese scientists created the virus in a lab in Wuhan, then tried to cover their tracks by reverse-engineering versions of the virus to make it look like it evolved naturally from bats.
Earlier this month, a report in the Wall Street Journal had stated that three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care after they fell ill in November 2019, a month before Beijing reported the first patient with the SARS-CoV-2 symptoms.