China conspiracy: 'Enormous evidence' coronavirus started in Wuhan laboratory - Pompeo

"These are not the first times that we've had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab", Pompeo said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo concurred with the DHS analysis during an appearance on an ABC television program on Sunday.

But, he acknowledged: "The doctors would say 'well, you shouldn't say that.' I'll say what I think".

Titled "Evil Pompeo is wantonly spewing poison and spreading lies", the harshly-worded commentary cited World Health Organization executive director Mike Ryan and Columbia University virologist W Ian Lipkin, who claimed that the virus is natural in origin and was not man-made or leaked from a laboratory.

At least 3.5 million people are now known to have been infected, but U.S. President Donald Trump offered hope for an end to the pandemic, saying he believed there would be a vaccine by year's end.

"We have said from the beginning, that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China", Pompeo said.

According to a WHO timeline, China first notified the global health body of an unknown pneumonia-like disease on December 31, 2019, and provided incremental updates on the mysterious outbreak throughout the month of January 2020.

US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter at the White House on Thursday: "Have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?" We saw the fact that those who were trying to report on this, medical professionals inside of China, were silenced.

The president said he believes the country's leaders had "made a mistake" and attempted to cover it up while "treating the rest of the world badly" by allowing people to fly out of Wuhan to other parts of the world, prompting the virus to spread.

He said: 'The World Health organisation has been a disaster everything they said was wrong and they're China-centric.

The United States now has more than 1,134,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 66,000 deaths, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

They never care to reply to reasonable suspicions concerning the pandemic prevention and control measures in the U.S. For example, why was the U.S. Army's top virus research lab ordered to halt the study of select biological agents and toxins previous year?

When the interviewer pointed out that this was not the conclusion of USA intelligence agencies, Pompeo quickly backtracked: "I've seen what the intelligence community has said".

Finally, Raddatz asked about the theory - also unsubstantiated so far - that China released the virus on goal.

Communist Party mouthpiece The Global Times said that western media outlets - "particularly those in Australia" - have "lost their self-proclaimed journalistic professionalism and independence", and are now "hurting the profound friendship" between the two countries.