Donald Trump says the world will ‘find out soon enough’ if the reported plague outbreak in Russia has been caused by a bioweapon. The US President has also compared Russia’s ‘silence’ on the matter to China’s approach to the Covid-19 outbreak.
Amid fears the plague could become another global pandemic, the US President has sought to calm the situation by saying the Kremlin has told him Russian officials ‘have it under control’. But Trump could not give a firm answer when asked if the plague was a bioweapon.
He said: “Well, we don’t think so. We’re going to find out soon enough.
“We don’t think so. If you listen to them it’s under control.”
He also compared Russia’s stance on the matter to China’s at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is believed to have originated in Wuhan.
“China did not say much, and Russia’s not saying very much either but they do say they have it under control,” he added.
His comments come as the man who led the American Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in early 2020, Dr Robert Redfield, speculated the plague could be a ‘manipulated’ form of the disease.
“If [Shipilova] was working in a plague lab and had an accident, there would have been a protocol for her to go on antibiotics within 24 hours [of exposure], and she would have likely responded effectively,” he told NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas Reports.
He added: “Now, if the plague that she was working with had been manipulated, to not be sensitive to antibiotics, which some of the bio-offensive programs that the Russians have done… have changed the susceptibility of these organisms to traditional antibiotics, that would explain why maybe they didn’t work.”
