US President Donald Trump has said he is "a little upset" with China over its late sharing of information on the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus and refusing to accept a visit by American medical experts to the country "out of pride".
"They should have told us about this," Trump told reporters at a press conference in the White House on Sunday during a briefing on his administration's coronavirus response.
"I'm a little upset with China. I'll be honest with you, because as much as I like (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping) and as much as I respect and admire the country," he said.
There are now 31,057 confirmed cases across the US, with 390 deaths.
New York state has become the epicentre of the outbreak in the US and accounts for almost half of the country's cases.
Trump said soon after he received information about the spread of the deadly viral infection in China, he wanted to send US medical team there. However, China did not allow.
Without specifying any timeline, Trump said he had spoken to President Xi "specifically" about sending US team to China, however, "he doesn't want this... this is not something that he wants".
The US president said it is "out of pride" that China didn't "want us to send people" and "they didn't really respond".
"I wish they could have told us earlier about what was going on inside," Trump said.
"We didn't know about it until it started coming out publicly," he said.
Trump added that China "was very secretive and that's unfortunate."
Reiterating that America's relationship with China is "very good", Trump said, "I wish they (had) told us three months sooner that this was a problem. We didn't know about it. They knew about it and they should (have) told us. We could have saved a lot of lives throughout the world."
On March 20, Morgan Ortagus, spokesperson of the US State Department, tweeted, "By Jan. 3, Chinese authorities had already ordered #COVID19 virus samples destroyed, silenced Wuhan doctors, and censored public concerns online. @SpokespersonCHN is right: This is a timeline the world must absolutely scrutinize."
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content