Macron calls probe into coronavirus pandemic untimely, Pompeo says China ‘failed to report’ outbreak

French President Emmanuel Macron has told Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison now is not the time for an international investigation into the coronavirus pandemic and that the urgency was to act in unison before looking for who was at fault, an Elysee official said on Wednesday. The president “agrees that there have been some issues at the start, but that the urgency is for cohesion, that it is no time to talk about this, while reaffirming the need for transparency for all players, not only the World Health Organization (WHO),” the official told Reuters.

Berlin also confirmed that Chancellor Angela Merkel had spoken with Morrison on Tuesday. Last Friday, her spokesman said that while the coronavirus appeared first in China, that country “has suffered a lot… and did a lot to fight against spreading.” The coronavirus, believed to have emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, was first reported by Beijing to the WHO on December 31.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday the US strongly believes that China’s leadership failed to report the outbreak of the new coronavirus to the WHO in a timely manner. Pompeo also accused Beijing of failing to report human-to-human transmission of the virus “for a month until it was in every province inside of China.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday it is inappropriate to put forward groundless accusations that the coronavirus causing Covid-19 was specifically created.