Italy was forced to buy back face masks and supplies it had donated to Beijing only weeks earlier, said a White House source.
China dispatched a plane loaded with medical supplies, including respirators and masks, to Italy as it was devastated by coronavirus. But recent reports revealed that the Chinese did not donate the supplies.
A Trump administration official said to The Spectator that Beijing forced Rome to purchase the equipment it had donated to China during the outbreak in Wuhan.
The senior official said: “Before the virus hit Europe, Italy sent tons of PPE (personal protective equipment) to China to help China protect its own population.
“China then has sent Italian PPE back to Italy – some of it, not even all of it … and charged them for it.”
Two weeks ago, Spain sent back 50,000 faulty testing kits after purchasing $470million worth of supplies, including masks, gloves, and ventilators, from China, according to reports.
Last week, Beijing instructed countries to ‘double-check’ the instructions after the Dutch government recalled 600,000 masks from China.
“It’s so disingenuous for Chinese officials now to say we are the ones who are helping the Italians or we are the ones who are helping the developing world when, in fact, they are the ones who infected all of us,” the senior official said.
“Of course they should be helping. They have a special responsibility to help because they are the ones who began the spread of the coronavirus and did not give the information required to the rest of the world to plan accordingly.”
The official added that the communist country’s fake news had delayed the response of America by at least a month.
“There is a disgusting disinformation campaign going on and it is unacceptable,” a source told The Mail: “They [the Chinese government] know they have got this badly wrong and rather than owning it they are spreading lies.”
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Replaced!