According to a Kremlin statement, Putin conveyed his opinion to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, during a telephone call in which he further criticized “counterproductive attempts to accuse China of failing to inform the world about the appearance of a new dangerous infection early enough “and called for closer cooperation between the two countries in the fight against the covid-19 pandemic.
Putin’s position comes after the President of the United States, Donald Trump, accused Beijing of “hiding” the seriousness of the epidemic in its beginning in China and frozen the American contribution to the functioning of the World Organization (WHO), accusing it of aligning its positions with China and speaking of an “investigation” that could clarify the origin of the new coronavirus.
Still, Washington and Beijing pledged on Wednesday to cooperate in the fight against the new coronavirus, despite the high tension between the two great world powers. Globally, the covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 140,000 deaths and infected more than 2.1 million people in 193 countries and territories. More than 450,000 patients were considered cured.
In Portugal, 629 people out of the 18,841 registered as infected died. The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
