China to share COVID-19 data with US: Trump

Team Udayavani, Mar 28, 2020, 9:44 AM IST

Washington: China will share its data related to the novel coronavirus pandemic with the US and the country will learn from Beijing’s experience, President Donald Trump has said, a day after he held an hour-long conversation with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Trump spoke to Xi over telephone, days after the US president angered Beijing by referring to the coronavirus as “Chinese virus” and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said China’s ruling Communist Party posed a “substantial threat” to Americans’ health and their way of life.

Xi assured full support to Trump in fighting the coronavirus as America emerged as the next major epicentre of the pandemic, but underlined that infectious diseases did not recognise any border or race.

“We talked about it (coronavirus) because he had additional experience of having been much earlier. And he has developed some incredible theories, and all that information is coming over here. A lot of it’s already come. We call it data. And we’re going to learn a lot from what the Chinese went through,” Trump told reporters on Friday.

Trump said he had nearly an hour-long meeting with Xi, which mostly focused on fast spreading coronavirus pandemic.

“One of the things I was asking him is when did you notice that this was happening. We talked about the whole concept, how it happened, when it happened, what was the most effective use. I mean, was it the fact was distance the best thing. We talked about everything,” he said.

Trump said that his Chinese counterpart had developed his own viewpoint on the escalating COVID-19 crisis.

“It happened there actually long before it happen here. By the way, it would have happened here a lot sooner had we not kept those people out, the Chinese people coming over to the country, had we not kept amount,” he said.

“Our relationship with China is very good. We also talked about the trade agreement. But I must tell you this whole invisible enemy has taken over the world. Nobody cares about trade. Nobody cares about anything. You want to talk about trade, they immediately get back to this (coronavirus),” he said.

According to a White House readout of the call, both leaders reiterated their commitment to cooperate to protect lives and livelihoods.

“The two leaders agreed to work together to defeat the coronavirus pandemic and restore global health and prosperity,” the White House said.

Earlier in the day, Trump referring to his phone call with Xi said that they have had a very tough experience.

“And they’re doing well and he’s doing well. President Xi is doing very well. We learned a lot and we have great communication together,” he said.

“We’re going to be sent great data from China – things that happened that they see that – you know, they’ve had an early experience, and we’re getting all of that information. Much of it has already been sent. It was sent yesterday and sent to our scientists to study,” Trump said.

The United States leads in the number of COVID-19 with 104,007 infections confirmed so far, followed by Italy (86,498) and China (81,906).