China concealed crucial information about the coronavirus outbreak from the rest of the world, a former head of MI6 has claimed.
John Sawers, the chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, from 2009 to 2014, said that China should answer for not alerting the world to how significant the epidemic was becoming sooner.
His intervention follows US President Donald Trump announcement that he would halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) which he said had promoted China's "disinformation" about the virus.
Mr Sawers said it would be better to hold China responsible rather than the WHO.
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"There is deep anger in America at what they see as having been inflicted on us all by China and China is evading a good deal of responsibility for the origin of the virus, for failing to deal with it initially," Sawers told the BBC.
"Intelligence is about acquiring information which has been concealed from you by other states and other actors, there was a brief period in December and January when the Chinese were indeed concealing this from the West."
In a White House press conference yesterday Mr Trump claimed the WHO was responsible for peddling 'lies' which had caused the virus to spread further than it would have otherwise, but has refused to accept criticism he failed to address the crisis in his own country soon enough either.
Trump - who initially claimed coronavirus was a hoax - said it wasn't "fair" for the US to contribute roughly £300million to £400 million [$400 million to $500million] to the WHO when China had given around £33million [$42million].
As the death toll continues to rise in the US - where 26,000 people have now died after testing positive for the coronavirus - Trump has gone on the offensive.
On Monday he played a campaign-like video at a press conference in which the actions of the White House were made to look decisive.
Afterwards he was called out by CBS reporter Paula Reid, who noted that the supposed time-line had a month and a half gap.
“The argument is that you bought yourself some time. But what did you do with that time?" she asked after the President's decision to stop flights from China was raised.
"You didn’t use it to prepare hospitals, you didn’t use it to ramp up testing. Right now, nearly 20 million are unemployed, tens of thousands of Americans are dead."
Rather than address any of her points, Trump lashed out: "Look, look, you know you’re a fake.
"You know that, your whole network, the way that you cover it is fake."
