The Chinese embassy in France sought to throw suspicion over surprise closing of the largest American biochemical weapons research center at the Fort Detrick based in Maryland during last July.
“After the closure, a series of pneumonia or similar cases appeared in the United States,” it stated.
“How many cases of Covid-19 were there among the 20,000 deaths due to the flu that started (in the United States) in September last year?” the Chinese embassy in Paris asked in a string of messages on Twitter.
Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have angered Beijing by repeatedly referring to “the Chinese virus” when discussing the Covid-19 outbreak first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
On Sunday, Trump said he was “a little upset” with China, adding: “They should have told us about this.” Earlier this month, a foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing, Zhao Lijian, suggested in a tweet that the US military brought the virus to Wuhan.