Trump suspects coronavirus outbreak came from China lab, doesn't cite evidence

President Donald Trump on Thursday said — without offering any evidence — that he has reason to believe that the coronavirus outbreak originated from a laboratory in China.

Trump initially was asked by a reporter at a White House event on Thursday about the origins of the virus, and answered, "You have heard all different things. Three or four different concepts as to how it came out."

"We should have the answer to that in the not-so-distant future and that will determine a lot how I feel about China," the president said.

But he later was asked by a reporter if he had "seen anything that gives you a high degree of confidence, at this point, that the Wuhan [China] Institute of Virology was the source of this virus?"

Trump replied, "Yes, I have," and then repeated that assertion.

"I think that that the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves, because they're like the public relations for China," Trump added, implying that the international health agency was covering up for China.

"This country," Trump said, referring to the United States,  "pays them [WHO] almost $500 million a year, and China pay them $38 million a year."

"They [WHO] shouldn't be making excuses when people make horrible mistakes, especially mistakes that are causing hundreds of thousands of people around the world to die."

Earlier Thursday, U.S. intelligence officials said they have concluded that the virus was "not man made or genetically modified."

But they also said they are still investigating if the coronavirus pandemic was sparked by an accident at a lab in China or by contact with animals.

World health officials have said the virus likely emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan, China.

They said it likely originated in bats and then jumped to an "intermediate host" before infecting humans.

SARS, an earlier coronavirus that emerged in November 2002 and killed nearly 800 people across the world over nine months, also was believed to have originated in bats before spreading to civet cats and later humans.