Coronavirus: The world is cross with China; some are even demanding damages

While the global tally of Covid-19 positive patients has crossed the three-million mark, world leaders, including the US, the UK and Germany increasingly believe that the repercussions of the pandemic could have been avoided if China had shown transparency and shared information about the virus in its early phases. Well, they have even started talking about claiming compensation from China, and a German daily has already put a figure to how much should be sought in compensation.
 

Here's a look at the US’ investigation against China and news suggesting countries would demand heavy compensation from Beijing.
 

Let’s begin with the latest update on the number of coronavirus cases. The Covid-19 toll in the US has surpassed 55,000, and more than 1 million positive cases has been reported so far, according to the Worldometer data.
 

Amid mounting Covid-19 cases in that country, President Donald Trump on Monday spoke about his administration conducting “serious investigations” into Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak and suggesting he would seek damages for the US.

Well, this is not the first time that Trump has accused China for the pandemic. Earlier, he often referred to Covid-19 as the ‘Chinese virus’, because of its origin in China. Trump also recently halted funding to the World Health Organization claiming the international body was biased towards China in issuing its guidance during the outbreak.
 

Recently, while responding to questions about a German newspaper editorial calling for China to pay Germany $165 billion, he suggested the US should also seek damages.
 

“Germany is looking at things, we are looking at things,” he said. “We are talking about a lot more money than Germany’s talking about.”
 

“We haven’t determined the final amount yet,” Trump said. “It’s very substantial.”
 

Well, in case you don’t know, one of Germany’s largest newspapers, Bild, in its article titled ‘What China owes us’, published on Wednesday, has mentioned a bill of 150 billion euros, or $165 billion, for the repercussions Germany had to face due to the pandemic that began in Wuhan city of China.
 

In the article, the newspaper has listed a 27-billion-euro charge for losses in German tourism, around 7.2 billion euros for losses to the country’s film industry, 50 billion euros for small businesses and a million euros per hour in costs lost to Lufthansa — a German airline.
 

While responding to the article, the Chinese Embassy in Berlin said it “stirs up nationalism, prejudice, xenophobia, and hostility to China”.
 

Responding to the embassy’s claims, Bild’s editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt addressed President Xi Jinping in a three-minute-long video and said the latter was endangering the world.
 

Apart from that, the White House trade advisor, Peter Navarro, also accused Beijing of sending low-quality and even counterfeit coronavirus antibody testing kits to the US and of “profiteering” from the pandemic and selling “fake tests and counterfeit tests”.
 

Well, that reminds one of India’s recent move of cancelling the rapid antibody test kit order from one Chinese company and asking its states and union territories to put the use of such kits on hold due to a wide variation in their performance.
 

However, the government has ensured that not a single rupee will be lost as payments were not made to the Chinese suppliers of the equipment...

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