China allowed people to travel outside despite knowing the risk of COVID-19 transmission: Pompeo

The Chinese leadership allowed its people to travel outside the country despite knowing the risk of the transmission of the coronavirus, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has alleged, saying that President Donald Trump will decide on the future course of action on penalising China.

Pompeo's comments came a day after Trump said that he does not want to talk to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping right now, expressing his displeasure at Beijing's handling of the coronavirus outbreak which has spread across the world, killing over 300,000 people.

The US has expressed disappointment over China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic which has claimed over 88,000 lives in America. President Trump on Thursday threatened to "cut off the whole relationship" with China.

Trump has been pressing China to agree for an inquiry into the origin of the virus, including the allegation that it emerged from a lab in Wuhan.

Those are the kinds of decisions that, as you stare at them, it is unambiguous that they created increased risk, that people were still travelling around the world - why? While the Chinese Communist Party knew of the risk of transmission, it was still allowing people to travel outside of China while they had locked down a major city inside of their own country, Peompeo told Breitbart News Network and satellite radio station SiriusXM Patriot in an interview.

Pompeo said that had China made a "different set of decisions" at the front end, there would have been more time for the entire world- not just the US- but the entire world to prepare and react to the pandemic that has now spread all across the globe.

We know that in December at least, maybe earlier, the Chinese Communist Party came to understand the threat that was presented. And then we watched their actions I've talked about some of them denying information to the world, Pompeo said.

We then saw that when the United States made the decision, when President Trump made the decision to close off travel between the United States and China, we saw China squawk at that, saying you shouldn't be doing that. Even though they had locked down Wuhan, they had not locked down travel all across the world, he said.

Evading a question on imposing penalty on China, Pompeo said that Trump would finally decide on the future course of action in this regard.

I don't want to get out in front of what President Trump will ultimately decide, but I think we all know in this administration that we have to make sure that something like this can never happen again. That means deterrence. That means setting up processes."