China is still blocking U.S. scientists from entering the country to study the coronavirus, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday.

“Even today, the Chinese government hasn’t permitted American scientists to go into China, to go into not only the Wuhan lab or wherever it needs to go to learn about this virus, to learn about its origins,” Pompeo told Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” according to The New York Post.

The Post also reported that Hong Kong researchers estimate the number of coronavirus cases could be four times higher than China has reported. China claims no one has died from the virus since mid-April and has reported the number of cases stopped growing after just over 80,000, statistics which strain credulity.

“Look, we know it began at one [lab], but we need to figure this out. There’s an ongoing pandemic. We still don’t have the transparency and openness we need in China,” Pompeo added.

As The Daily Wire previously reported, China had attempted to cover up the coronavirus outbreak when it first appeared in Wuhan, with Pompeo in previously calling it a “disinformation campaign.”

“This disinformation campaign, which began when we began to call out this risk that was created not only for the Chinese people, but now we can see people all across the world where the Chinese Government knew about this risk, had identified it, they were the first to know, and they wasted valuable days at the front end, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to leave Wuhan to go to places like Italy that’s now suffering so badly. They tried to suppress this information – you talked about the means by which they did it – instead of trying to actually do the work to suppress the virus, which is what the world demanded. And the Chinese Communist Party didn’t get it right and put countless lives at risk as a result of that,” Pompeo told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in mid-March.

As the virus spread in Wuhan, China detained doctors and journalists who tried to speak out about it and ordered samples of the virus to be destroyed.

Pompeo also on Wednesday called out the World Health Organization (WHO) for its role in helping China coverup the virus.

“It is the World Health Organization’s responsibility to achieve that transparency. They’re not doing it. They need to be held accountable,” Pompeo said. “And what’s been great is to see other countries around the world to begin to recognize the WHO failures as well.”

Pompeo also suggested WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus should step down.

“It may be the case that the United States can never return to underwriting, having U.S. taxpayer dollars go to the WHO. We may need to have even bolder change than that,” he said.

The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a subscriber.