Beijing says Pompeo lied about virus' origin

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made incoherent remarks in an interview because he was "making up stories", a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Thursday.

He was "using lies to cover up lies" and it is no secret, Hua Chunying said at a daily news conference.

Pompeo said in the interview on Sunday with Martha Raddatz of U.S.-based ABC News that "the best experts so far seem to think" the virus was man-made, and that he has no reason to disbelieve it.

Raddatz cited a statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on April 30 that says the U.S. Intelligence Community "concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified".

Pompeo then said he agreed with the statement, and that he had no reason to believe that the intelligence community got it wrong.

Without evidence, Pompeo has claimed that the virus originated in a laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Hua said on Thursday.

The lab is a cooperative project between the Chinese and French governments, she said, adding the lab's design, construction and management has strictly followed international standards, and its equipment undergoes third-party testing every year.

It's the virus that is the enemy of the U.S., and China and the U.S. should work together to fight the pandemic, Hua said. She confirmed that the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region has donated medical supplies to the Flying Tiger Historical Organization.

The donation, made by the region's People's Association for Friendship With Foreign Countries, included 6,000 surgical masks and 4,000 pairs of surgical gloves, Hua said.

The donation helps carry on the friendship between the Chinese and U.S. people, and comes as a positive response to the support U.S. society has shown in China's fight against COVID-19, Hua said.

Hua said Chinese customs figures show that China has supplied more than 6.6 billion masks, 344 million pairs of surgical gloves, 44.09 million protective clothing items, 6.75 million pairs of goggles and about 7,500 ventilators to the U.S. from March 1 to Tuesday.

China hopes the American people will overcome the outbreak soon, and it will continue to do all it can to provide support to countries around the world in tackling the virus, she said.